Ivory Terminal

It seems overwhelmingly obvious to me that Palin is planning to replace Senator Ted Stevens and end up in Washington, where she can get far away from the ever growing pile of corruption evidence.

All of the print about self-serving interviews and going “rouge” seem to support this. Palin’s claim that she is “not doing this for naught” has gotten some attention in the media as speculation that there will be a 2012 presidential run. I think the idea of the Republican party handing Palin a presidential nomination is implausible. That said, she seems to be extremely popular in Alaska, and the scenario of Stevens winning reelection and designating the seat or holding a special contest is not far fetched. Stevens is about to turn 85, and is a newly convicted felon. I assume he will get through Tuesday and then try and get out of the news as quickly and completely as possible in order to get a tasty sentencing deal.

I doubt Palin would be able to do much more damage than Stevens in the Senate, and her junior status would help insure that Stevens’ iron reign over earmarks would take a blow. Palin may try to use her opening days a Senator to drum up 2012 interest, but I assume that all of the attention will immediately disappear after Tuesday and not come back. A Senator Palin outcome would also be interesting because despite the winner of the election, both of the other party’s national candidates would return to (or join) the more distinguished legislative body.

So far my political predictions here are 0 for 0 (and computer predictions 0 for 2), but I would be willing to bet the farm on one of the prediction sites that following a McCain loss the media will switch to reporting about Senate candidate Palin.

Ted Stevens was found guilty of lying about the source and legality of his home improvements today. I was initially surprised that this made it to trial, yet alone a guilty verdict of a sitting Senator. It appears that Palin’s claims of clean up in Alaska may have some merit. That said, you can still be irrational but not corrupt.

Hopefully this verdict and the coming sentencing will set a precedent of charges for sitting officials taking advantage of their positions.

I am not happy about this for multiple reasons, and look forward to finding a way to move this curve…

Things are beginning to look a little one-sided. All else equal, I will always side with the quants. Here are three services that have done their homework, and are starting to trend together:

FiveThirtyEight (Dem biased quant, poll aggregation): Obama 95.8% Prob. 52.2% popular vote. (361.4 electoral votes, a McCain win is several SD from the mean)

Intrade (International real money “futures”): Obama 80.2% Prob. (364 electoral votes), no nationwide popular vote, but FL priced at 75% Obama, PA 88%, VA 77%, CA 96%, NY 97%, etc.

Iowa Electronic Markets (Domestic real money “futures” [I bought Obama in low 60s, best performing asset for me this fall, too bad there was a $500 limit!]): Dem 81.2% Prob. 53.5% popular vote.

It does not appear that anyone has been running side by side Dem/Rep and Obama/McCain polls recently to show the externalities like racism. Coming into the last debate tonight, it will be interesting to hear the subtle (or not) personal associations mentioned about each candidate. It appears that the issue platforms have resulted in an endgame, so it is shock and awe time. Anyone have a hole card left?

Lately, I have spent a great deal of time running into situations where End User License Agreements (EULAs) have prevented me from accomplishing relatively simple desired tasks, mainly in one operating system.

Like most people who spend too much time on computers, I have a favorite operating system (from here on “My Favorite OS” or “MFOS”), and it is protected by a EULA preventing many uses. The capstone of the EULA in this instance is a clause that forbids one from installing the operating system on any hardware that is not produced by the company that owns the OS (it is fair to point out that this trait, if pursued by the most obvious competitor, would result in immediate anti-trust sanctions).

Normally, this is not a large issue to me, as I find the companies hardware often dovetails with my needs. However, over the past couple of years, three huge gaps have developed in their limited product line.

The first gap is in the area of expandable desktop computing. The only truly expandable offering that can legally run MFOS now weighs in at a massive $2300 minimum retail cost, that still requires several hundred dollars of additional parts if you plan to use it for anything that could not be done by a lesser machine. A few years ago, the price of entry for the predecessor was $1500, in an era where the competition was more expensive leading to little difference in price. Currently, there is a healthy four digit gap between the minimum expandable configuration that meets the EULA, and a expandable (certainly not equal, but expandable) machine running Windows. This creates a healthy incentive to violate the EULA when a mid-level expandable desktop is desired. I chose to play by the rules in this case, and ended up with an 8-core beast that spends most of its time largely idle (a trait that backed me up against another EULA wall as we will see in a bit when we get to virtualization).

The second gap regards netbooks. There has been a lot of talk here and throughout the tech world about these miniscule laptop complements (I do not think anyone here is willing to say replacements). There were two EEE 701s owned by people involved in this site, and most of us are now on the second or third iteration of the little computers. Netbooks clearly have a massive and growing market, from people dipping their toes in the water of computing to those buying another machine for “toilet browsing”. The latest netbooks almost all use an Intel Atom processor, which provides a great deal of power for basic computing while sipping on battery power. My favorite OS is not yet coupled to a netbook, but it sure runs well on them… It is very possible that an offering will debut on Tuesday the 14^th (my original call in September was obviously and sadly incorrect, 0 for 1), but even so, I feel that ignoring this market for so long is a grave mistake and leaves a huge hole for both closed and open source competition. Despite the lowly hardware specs, this class of computers is here to stay, and will probably grow massively at the expense of their more costly larger siblings.

The third gap, which has risen to prominence on the back of multi-core computing (but not yet efficient parallel processing operating systems) is virtualization. Again, both the closed and open source competition have made huge strides in this area compared to almost no activity from MFOS. MFOS only recently announced that virtualization would be tolerated with their server version only, leaving virtualization software providers to scramble to provide experimental solutions. I feel strongly that if the current EULA is to be left in place, the consumer version of the operating system should be allowed to be virtualized on MFOS’s machines as much as a user pleases. I find it absurd that virtualization is not allowed on already restricted hardware. MFOS server is quite expensive, and frankly unnecessary for several common objectives of personal virtualization. This issue is likely to be the least important of the three for the MFOS user base, but I find it the most absurd yet. There is no point in having powerful parallel processor computers when most facets of the OS cannot make use of all cores simultaneously. For many, this waste could be minimized or eliminated with additional virtual machines sharing the workload.

In the end, this is about money, and MFOS will likely only be interested in which of these issues hurt their wallet. Personally, I think that all three could impact them, and I will detail below:

Regarding desktop computing, I think MFOS has a big problem on their hands. With the rise in power of laptop computers relative to consumer desktops, if someone has sufficient motivation to own a workstation class computer, you can bet they would be willing to spend half a day getting their illegitimate hardware up and running on TFOS (Their…). What did I do regarding my first gripe? I stayed squeaky-clean and dropped a phenomenal amount of money on MFOS’s most powerful class of computer. If everyone exhibited my behavior, MFOS would have no incentive to modify their EULA, but looking around the intertubes, it is clear that many people agree that there is a hole in the lineup glaring enough to create their own solution. In this case, I think the EULA is valid, if not correct, but MFOS needs to come out with a mid-level tower. I do not believe this would result in anywhere near the level of workstation cannibalization that many fear. In my case, I likely would have made the same purchase with a mid-level tower available, but largely because I want to take advantage of virtualization and expandability of certain components beyond the realm of the average user.

Regarding netbooks, I believe MFOS is going to have to compete in this market and soon. Netbooks are dominating top-seller lists, as it is becoming clear that many computer users do not require the power of current desktop and laptop offerings. With a renewed interest in energy efficiency, the Atom processor is poised to take a significant chunk of both mobile and stationary basic computing market share, and the adoption of net-based services and thin-client computing will only encourage the use of these chipsets. With a new timeline, I still believe MFOS will offer an Atom platform that is different from the competition (tablet), but I am shocked that they have waited so long to detail their intentions. If the rumors of an $800 price of entry are true, their offering better be jaw-dropping, because this is going to end up being a very price sensitive market. Asus, the creator and early dominator of netbooks, has already been forced to slash their EEE netbook prices in the face of feature-similar competition. I think MFOS will announce an offering in this category as early as Tuesday, which will take only a bit of the wind out of the sails of the MFOS netbook hacking market. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9, starting at ~$350, has already been proven to run the latest version of MFOS with minimal effort, and MFOS needs to get on the stick immediately with a comparable offering if not one that blows the competition away. What did I do regarding the netbook issue? I got rid of one MFOS machine and an EEE, and consolidated my mobile computing needs into MFOS’s 3lb vanity product. At this point, I am happy with the decision, but my next complementing laptop purchase is more likely to be a netbook than a desktop replacement, and at this point, MFOS will not be getting my money unless they produce my predicted offering at a fair price, making the Atom-centered competition look boring.

Regarding virtualization, I think MFOS is going to flat out lose. There is absolutely no valid reason to prohibit virtualization on limited hardware that is authorized to run MFOS. I see no reason to purchase the 10-client server version of MFOS when I am only serving myself on one machine. I forecast that the EULA will be modified to allow personal use of virtualization on approved hardware in the next version of MFOS. If anything, this will be a revenue generating opportunity of MFOS, as users would be willing to pay for an additional copy of the OS to run a second environment.

I paid for my five license pack of the latest version of MFOS even though the latest version was included on three of my four current MFOS computers. Without getting into too much detail, I am getting my use out of it. In conclusion, MFOS is winning but fading on issues one and two without new hardware offerings, but is destined to lose on issue number three. They backed me into expensive offerings that accomplish more than my needs regarding the desktop and netbook classes, but if I had been more price-sensitive at the time of purchase, I would have seriously considered EULA-violating choices in both cases. Virtualization is another story entirely. The dominant closed source OS does not seem to think they have legal ground to discourage virtualization, and I feel that MFOS would likely arrive at the same conclusion if the concept was ever tested. It is time to open the doors to virtualization on their MFOS-approved hardware.

I have now been out of banking and back in the roll of a student for one month. It has turned out to be a rocky transition for me.

Over the past few years, I completely stopped doing everything by hand or in my head. The two hardest parts about going back to school for me have been doing math in my head, and writing with a pen or pencil.

I have always thought of myself as a very competent math student. Math was always easy to me, and I often got good grades, even if I did not do all of the prep work recommended to master concepts. I enjoy math, and have turned that enjoyment into jobs and hobbies that rely on working quickly and correctly with numbers and computers. Surprisingly, a few years off from doing math without the assistance of a computer has turned me into a rather poor math student. I make careless errors deriving functions, and worse, forget several rules of relatively simple concepts. I struggled through a math review course and now may have to retake the lab, simply unimaginable to me with my resume of math and quantitive experience.

It is embarrassing to admit, but I am also having trouble writing. I am forgetting letters, misspelling words, drawing terrible graphs, and am generally very slow to move the pen on the paper. I have gotten noticeably better since the beginning of September, but there is still a long way to go. Being left-handed has not helped me a bit. I refuse to sit in the left-handed desks that are available in conventional classrooms because they are always to the far left of the room, and almost always manage to border a wall. I find this oversight to be fundamentally flawed, and choose to use a right-handed desk in the middle of the room where I am not slamming my elbow into an unsympathetic cinder block every five minutes. However, I do not assume for a moment that this has anything to do with my hardships writing and my generally horrible penmanship.

These are complications I never imagined running into, and were the least of my worries when I signed up for a graduate program. Now, in addition to mastering them, I am finding that I have to relearn the patience and discipline required to study in a manner that will allow me to retain information. For the past few years, I have excelled in an environment that relied on speed, multi-tasking, and the ability to gain a minimum level of competence in any subject almost instantly. Now, I am participating in courses where all of those criteria are actually negative influences. Being able to juggle two conference calls without anyone knowing is not an appreciated skill when I have to read and apply concepts presented in arcane textbooks. Currently, it can take me days to read and master a 100 page text, because I am unable to concentrate on a single subject for several hours in one session.

I am hoping all of these issues will be resolved in another month, or at least by the end of my first semester. If not, I am worried I am in the wrong place or the wrong program. I feel like I am still in shock from the manic world of finance. Over the month, I have been checking my e-mail less frequently, spending a smaller amount of time on financial sites, and generally settling into a role where I am not on call all of the time. I hope I am able to transition successfully to the comparatively calm world of graduate school. For now, I am going to get back to the proof that I put down when I realized that I was turning pages but not retaining knowledge.

The bailout bill has passed. We just had another spectacularly uninformative news brief from our President.

The incentives for all sides are so out of whack in this bill, that I doubt most banks will take “advance” of the exchange options. I think simply admitting participation in the program will lead to further declines for the institutions. Having Paulson run a huge fund after enthusiastically getting Goldman Sachs in the leverage mess is insulting. It should have been made clear that someone else was going to be making the final decision on debt purchases.

It is unfortunate that there was not an alternate plan that proposed large equity stakes in participating firms. Shareholders in these firms should be diluted, and the firms should have to continue to hold their bad debt.

I suppose passing the bailout was necessary, but I have a feeling we will see little use of the offers. Any bank in good standing will not be willing to accommodate the executive compensation clauses. I look forward to discovering the prices that the Treasury will be willing to pay on our behalf for this garbage.

These are strange days.

The VP debate is over. Most of the ivory terminal group is in different parts of the US, so we were unable to watch it together.

To me, the debate was over when Palin came out and stated that she was not going to answer questions that were asked, and would instead provide answers to her own questions. This is so often done in debates, but never so obviously, and certainly not attributed to by the candidate’s themselves.

I hope the voting public was paying attention to the answers and non-answers this evening. This is a very important election, economically, socially, and internationally. According to the Iowa Electronic Markets, the Democrats went into this debate with a probability of victory over 70%, and I will be interested to see the market reaction tomorrow.