Monthly Archives: July 2012

The Federal Reserve Is Evil!

When the mainstream media covers the Federal Reserve, it is almost exclusively lies and propaganda. There is more misinformation on money and the Federal Reserve than any other subject. The Federal Reserve steals via inflation, and the proceeds go to banksters, politicians, and insiders.

There is a very simple argument against the Federal Reserve. “Inflation is theft!” Inflation steals from everyone. Insiders get the newly-printed money, giving them a huge economic advantage over everyone else.

The only way I can get money is by working.  For banksters and politicians, they get to print new money and spend it on whatever they want.

The Federal Reserve is a price-fixing cartel. The Federal Reserve fixes interest rates. Interest rates are the price of money. Everyone agrees that it would be evil for the government to set the price of oil or most goods. The Federal Reserve is somehow exempt from normal economic analysis of monopolies.

Normally, the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates artificially low, compared to inflation. This sends a false economic signal to investors. With high inflation and low interest rates, it seems profitable to borrow and buy houses, stock, or whatever. This naturally leads to bubbles, booms, and busts.

A mainstream economist is actually a professional liar. Most economists say that the Federal Reserve is desirable. Most economists say that booms and busts are an economic law of nature. They actually are caused by a corrupt monetary system.

In the USA, the #1 employer of economists is the Federal Reserve. For the top economic journals, most of the referees worked for the Federal Reserve at one point in their career. Peer review becomes censorship, when most of the academic leaders in a field have false beliefs. If an economics PhD student sharply criticized the Federal Reserve, he would essentially be calling out all his peers as frauds. His papers would not be published, he would not get any grant money, and his career would be a failure.

If you want two simple arguments against the Federal Reserve, all you need is “Inflation is theft!” and “The Federal Reserve is a price-fixing cartel!” The Compound Interest Paradox is a more subtle argument against the Federal Reserve.

Reader Mail – 07/22/2012 To 07/28/2012

Frank commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.
Check out John T Reeds thinking of wounded warriors http://www.johntreed.com/woundedwarriors.html

The all-volunteer military is a fraud. Grown-ups know that insecure young men are vulnerable to the Hollywood hype and that hundreds of thousands will volunteer for the adventure and chance to impress their friends and make their enemies envious with medals and combat mystique and all that. Grown-ups know the kids who volunteer have no idea what they are getting themselves into. Yet they sin by silence by letting it happen, and by opposing the draft.

“Support our troops” magnets are popular. I got a better idea. Support them by talking them out of being a troop. I told my sons to have nothing to do with the military unless there is a draft and general mobilization of the population for a war. If all parents did the same, there would be a draft U.S. military that fought fewer wars and took far better care to avoid wounded and KIAs.

http://www.johntreed.com/military.html

As an Operation Iraqi Freedom/New Dawn vet I'm glad someone is manning up to take on the sentimentality of the government BS such as this man John T Reed also an Army Vet of the Vietnam War. Keep it up!!

One phrase you should keep in mind is "economic conscription". Some people are so poor that their best career option may be joining the military. Even then, it's a bad idea.

The mainstream media repeats "Support the troops!" over and over again. They have to do it, because it's a lie. Similarly, the mainstream media says "Gold investors are idiots!" over and over again. If something is true, it doesn't need to be repeated as often as possible.

If anyone in the mainstream media suggests that "Support the troops!" is false, then they are fired and their career is ruined.

Frank commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.

http://www.johntreed.com/separation.html

1. Military retirement benefits have long been way too generous. It has long been possible to retire from the U.S. military at age 37 with half pay indexed to inflation and with health care for the retiree and his dependents for life at a cost of one tenth the average cost civilians pay. They should be radically reduced across the board to approximately match civilian benefits. Ideally, the military would end pensions completely and let military personnel prepare for their own retirement the way civilians do with IRAs and home ownership and so on.

Military pilots have no monopoly on risking their lives. Military vets have no monopoly on risking their lives. Uniformed services including military, police, and fire have no monopoly on risking their lives. I read somewhere that the occupation that is the riskiest of all including the military is highway worker. Truth is there is a line of guys wanting into life-risking ocupations like military pilot, police, and firefighter. One of the attractions is that you can brag about risking your life merely by stating your occupation or parading around the civilian world in your uniform. That is a form of compensation itself. Americans must get over their fear of criticizing or even saying no to uniformed employees seeking extra compensation because they risked their lives. Vallejo, CA went bankrupt because of their inability to say no to police and fire demanding more and more pay and benefits. Citizens there joke that P.D. stands for “pay or die” referring to the many police warnings that the citizens will not be as safe if they reject police financial demands.

Regarding to your link, that's a common trick. If you need to work 20 years to get a pension, then there's an incentive to fire someone after 18-19 years.

In a startup, if you get options with "4 year vesting, 1 year cliff", there's an incentive to fire someone after 11 months. With Zygna and Facebook, early employees had very valuable unvested options, giving dishonest executives an incentive to fire them and weasel out of paying.

Frank commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.

It also gives them an incentive to be a risk-averse beauracrat, and a failure to problem solve freely hence the brainwashed "military man" who can't think outside the box. Like most federal workers just counting the days until they get their fat pensions trying not to screw up. I feel this is a big reason we are losing this war and haven't won a war since WWII.

The purpose of war is not the "official" public reason.

The true purpose of war is so that insiders and the military-industrial complex can make a lot of money. How much did Blackwater and Halliburton make off the wars? What about all the other military contractors? In some cases, the contractors get paid more than soldiers!

Frank commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.

Blackwater and Halliburton existed before the war in Iraq they provide services that the military doesn't provide or provide at too high a cost. They exist because of war, war doesn't exist because of them. The war began because of hubris not money, multiculturalism, fear, paranoia, a worship of democracy, a lack of belief in biological determinism, your blaming of the military- industrial complex comes off a little strangely for a free marketer.

Really? How much money do Halliburton and Blackwater spend on lobbying? There also are indirect kickbacks, where former generals are hired as overpaid executives.

As long as the State exists, insiders will abuse it to line their pockets.

The military-industrial complex is completely the opposite of a free market. If you make weapons and sell them to the government, that is not a true free market business.

Frank commented on Do Disabled Veterans Deserve Respect?.

Definitely there is alot of corruption going on up there but keep in mind that there have been real cuts in both weapon systems and personnel that have to do with tactical and strategic positioning that have cut back on spending such as the crusader artillery piece and the F-14 Tomcat Fighter-Bomber that were cut because they were better suited for the cold-war than the war on terror. If corruption was the only reason for war then they would still be purchasing them. There IS corruption such as congress forcing the Army to buy tanks when they lack helicopters but saying that this war was due to insider corruption definitely.

The war on terror WAS a real war, the cold war WAS a real war but to say the existed comes off Chomskyish trying to explain every ineptitude, screw up, or falsehood as corporate cronyism by big business. Sometimes we have a false idol or a bad philosophy we can't shield ourselves from the greater culture.

Do you notice your rambling thoughts and incoherent writing? I'm challenging your pro-State brainwashing.

Also, the military uses twisted logic. A smaller than expected budget increase counts as a budget "cut".

War is 99% or more about corruption, and only a tiny bit about protecting freedom. It's mostly waste. Do military bases in foreign countries really protect my freedom? Were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan beneficial, or one big boondoggle?

I spend more than half my income on taxes, and more than half the Federal government's budget is military. Is the military worth 3 months of my life every year?

The "War on Terror" is a real war? Let me know when the President of Terror surrenders so we can declare victory.

Do you really believe the TSA makes people safer? There are some people who do bad things. That isn't an excuse to take away everyone else's freedom and spy on everyone.


Lisa commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.
After reading this post and your Gabby Giffords post, I hope you are not allowed to own weapons. Feelings of grandeur, paranoia, incoherent thought processes, etc, etc. schizoid or possibly bipolar? Please stay on meds and away from weapons.

What? I point out that women can abuse the legal system to "rape" men, and that upsets you? That makes no sense.

I may someday get a gun for self-defense, but that's very hard in NYC. I'm not sure if I am eligible to get one, because I was involuntarily hospitalized.

Looking at the law, it seems that I'm only Federal-disqualified if a judge ruled I was involuntarily hospitalized. For me, it never progressed to that stage, because I always cooperated while hospitalized. I should be eligible. It seems that I could get a gun permit, if I otherwise cooperate with all other laws. However, the NYC law seems to be stricter. I'd probably have to hire a lawyer, if I was serious about getting a gun permit. The NY law seems to say "You have to answer whether or not you were ever hospitalized, but it isn't an automatic disqualification."

Actually, I am able to think correctly and clearly. When everyone is brainwashed to be a mindless slave, the people who can think clearly are incorrectly labeled as defective.

Whenever I hear trolls point out the evils of owning a gun, it makes me want to get one.

If I get serious about owning gold and hiding it in my home, getting a gun may be a *VERY* good idea.

Anonymous Coward commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

Lisa, your comment is a bit over the top. Your comment is actually offensive.

At most, the title of this blog post is in questionable taste, but it is referring to a news story.

You also need to distinguish between writing on a computer screen and actually doing bad things in the real world.

I thought she was offended by my post on James Eagan Holmes, but it seems that it really was the State-rapes-man part that offended her.

I understand why mass-murderers like Anders Behring Breivik, Jared Loughner, and James Eagan Holmes did it. That's a stupid and pointless thing to do, but I understand their frustration.

Jared Loughner once met Gabrielle Giffords, asked a stupid question, and she gave a rude answer. He was disgusted about how evil she was, and became obsessed. It is very shocking to meet politicians and notice that they're some of the most evil people I've ever met.

Anonymous Coward commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

The legal system "rapes" anyone it comes into contact with regardless of guilt or blame or responsibility.

Lawyers' fees are too high. For their high fees, they give poor service. Court costs are too high. Even if you are blameless yourself or your business will be on the line for 1 - 2 years while it takes things to be sorted out. Even if blameless you will ultimately shoulder high legal bills.

It is a racket. I'm talking generally here. It is a racket in all areas of law.

Besides you are correct. If a woman leaves a man and even if the man is blameless, he will have to pay _x_ in legal fees to avoid getting screwed over and losing all his assets and the roof over his heard. _x_ is an integer multiple of all the money he would earn in a year.

Anonymous Coward commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

An example of how courts treat people that appear in court for themselves and don't pay lawyers.

A family was about to move into a house they had purchased. However a bunch of squatters moved in. In the United Kingdom the police will not intervene when squatters take over your house. You have to get a court order to get them out at your own expense.

The family had to live in a hotel at great expense.

The father of the family went to court to get the squatters evicted from his house. He didn't pay for a lawyer.

The judge threw his case out on a technicality. The squatters stayed in his house.

I think in the end the family managed to get the squatters out of their house, but only after it was trashed.

It does raise the question that judges don't care about justice or rights or morality. If you are hurt and you don't pay for a lawyer, then the judge will thrown your case out on a technicality. The working man and the taxpayer gets screwed again and again.

Justin commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

Typical Statist Lisa: "FSK says things I don't like he should be disarmed." "FSK doesn't hold the status quo on his opinions he should be medicated." Disgusting.

Actually, I am currently taking a low dose of Seroquel. It's very effective, although the other drugs I tried were horrible. It had the side-effect of partially curing my color-blindness, which makes me wonder if it's just curing a vitamin deficiency. All the food we eat is processed, so maybe there's some hidden nutrient missing from most food? Maybe people only need this "missing nutrient" when they're under stress or start using more of your brain?

Anonymous Coward commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

> Actually, I am currently taking a low dose of Seroquel

It is a pharmaceutical, not a vitamin. Man survived for an awfully long time without artificially created chemicals.

Be careful you are not developing a very slow dependency.

It could have some sort of placebo effect. Or you may look upon it as a crutch that gives you some kind of confidence.

Just like someone saying if you use a magic comb before a competition then you won't mess up. It is just a psychological crutch.

I don't know how old you are. Maybe thirties. Maybe forties. How did you survive for 30 - 40 years before Seroquel. I presume in those 30 years, you managed reasonably good interactions, passed job interviews, passed exams, made friends....

So why if you managed 30 years without Seroquel do you absolutely need it now? What changed?

Maybe working out your thoughts without drugs would be as just as effective.

How do you know that the pharmaceutical industry isn't so incompetent, that they miscategorized a vitamin as a drug?

My thinking ability is the same as before I was taking Seroquel, maybe slightly better. I haven't noticed any impairment. I can do all my normal stuff.

When I was taking Risperdal/Geodon/Abilify, they crippled me.

How do you know that "Stop taking Seroquel!" isn't as stupid as "Stop eating Vitamic C?" Most people don't notice the Seroquel deficiency, because they don't use all of their brain.

Because I have more awareness, I need more Seroquel than the trace amount found in normal food?

Anonymous Coward commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.

> How do you know that “Stop taking Seroquel!” isn’t as stupid

> as “Stop eating Vitamic C?”

Simple. Other mammals likewise have a mutation that stops them synthesizing their own Vitamin C.

Plus it is easy to see how they mutation stuck. The mutation happened, but the affected humans (or human ancestor) didn't die out because they got the Vitamin C in the fruit and vegetables they were eating. So the mutation spread.


Lionne commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.
That is a question I too would like answered! I suspect prescription meds, both anti-depressants and Xanax etc might have a lot to answer for. I would love to see stats on how many of the mass killings are performed by people on these meds.

dionysusal commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

Interesting that this happened two weeks before a scheduled vote in the US Senate to approve a UN treaty that would allow the UN to seize American guns (problem/reaction/solution). Also, that particular theater had so many problems from gangs at midnight premieres that the Aurora city police had 4 to 8 city cops at each one, but at this one there were no city cops. Also, he was pursuing a PhD in neuroscience so may have been involved in mind-altering neuroscience research and under the control of his "handlers."

I doubt that. It's probably what I said, one frustrated person snapping under the stress.

It's a better example of "Never let a good crisis go to waste!" rather than a psyop.

geral commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

http://sosbeevfbi.ning.com/profiles/blogs/law-of-physics-divine-nature

LAW OF PHYSICS & DIVINE NATURE.

23 Sep 2011 @ 13:46, by Geral W. Sosbee

A nation and its people who deliberately engage in the systematic conquest, subjugation, torture, imprisonment and killing of others must by the laws of physics and divine nature have the same calamities delivered upon themselves.

If the police really did want to kill you, you'd be dead already. It's very easy to kill someone and pretend it's an accident. It's also very easy to fabricate criminal charges and send someone to prison.

kimberly dilks commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

Are you kidding me!!?? My question is, HOW is it that we, as a government, with all that we can do; did not find that it was at all suspicious that a young 24 year old guy was buying massive amounts of ammunition for FOUR MONTHS!! How is that not flagged!!?? And as for everybody in the movie theater toting their weapons; I think that you have seen too many westerns!! All we need now is more people pissed off like this guy to snap and cause more "terror" to peoples lives! If you carry them to places like in the movie theater then you will carry the weapons to school and other places as well! THINK PEOPLE!! If we would have flagged Holmes sometime in the four months that he was buying all this ammunition and per-meditating this whole terrorism action then maybe these poor innocent people would still be alive today! How can someone have shipments to their home and work which conceal so many weapons and ammunition and not be noticed? How was no flag raised as to why someone would need thousands of ammunition? If we could have be more keen to noticing shit like this then they would have also found all the research done on his computer gearing this individual towards a potential "per-meditated" terrorist attack? And yes, this is an act of terrorism; ask these poor families who have been terrorized and how one night of brutality have changed their lives completely!

I did say that someone should have identified him as a potential troublemaker and stopped him. The current legal system is not designed for that. The only options are to arrest someone, or do nothing.

The right to own and carry a gun is an absolute natural right. If some people in the theater were carrying guns, they may have stopped things before it got too bad. When I say "carry a gun", I also mean "learn how to use it properly".

If you know other people might be armed, that's also a deterrent.

Police don't get special magic powers that enable them to use guns safely, but nobody else can.

You have been brainwashed to believe that all guns are evil, except when police use them.

Never let a good crisis go to waste. An incident like this is an excuse to take away everyone else's freedom. It is wrong to restrict what honest people may do, just because some criminals do bad things.

Will B Vigilant commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

"You can tell from the photo that this is probably someone with low emotional intelligence and medium/high logical intelligence"

NO, I CAN'T. And you know what? Neither can Y-O-U!

What are you, some kind of mad Nazi scientist who can judge an individual's personality traits by simplymeasuring their cranium? That kind of BS was debunked long ago already my friend.

What a fucking stupid thing to say in an otherwise brilliant post!

How will Miscavige’s “church” leverage the Denver theatre murders? commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

[...] has made the observation that in the first few hours after the shooter’s arrest, the number one question being asked was [...]

That is false. I can evaluate someone's personality type solely based on appearance.

It is easier to evaluate in-person, but you can get some information from a photo or video.

I gave one example, the 45 degree laugh lines on his face.

All people have an intrinsic ability to evaluate personality based on appearance. They learn to suppress that instinct due to their pro-State brainwashing.

Evil people love the fact that most people suppress their "evaluate personality based on appearance" instinct. That enables them to pass undetected.

That's also why I say "Someone with high emotional awareness should have been able to identify and stop the murders beforehand, by identifying him as a potential troublemaker."

Here's the reason you can evaluate personality type based on appearance. Based on someone's personality type, some facial muscles are used but not others. Over a lifetime, this leads to certain wrinkle patterns. This has nothing to do with eugenics. Personality type also affects baldness patterns and hair appearance.

Justin commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

I thought this was pretty insulting: "The police did a great job they responded in 90 seconds..." no the police did a terrible job, 12 people are dead 50 injured. My #1 question FSK is where were the concealed carriers? This guy should have been gunned down in under 4 seconds, not 90.

When seconds count, the police are minutes away. I'd rather take care of my safety by carrying a gun, rather than hoping the police will get there in time.

Another favorite bit from today's headline "Oohh! The murderer is going to court today! That'll teach him a lesson!" There is no doubt that there will be a high-profile trial and conviction and execution. The State is going to milk this for as much publicity as possible. The fnord is "The State prevents mass murders from getting away with it!" However, the State failed to prevent the murders in the first place. Even without a State police/justice monopoly, murderers would be caught and stopped. Also, the State places the murderer on death row for 10 years providing the illusion of justice and fairness, rather than executing him right away.

Joseph DuPont commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

It would seem that we might need a mechanism , an amber alert of sorts, to tell authorities when someone has been fired, failed major exams or has been given notice of divorce or foreclosure. It is mostly males who go "Postal" after being pushed to the brink. In too many cases failure added to some already treated mental condition equates to disaster. Despite giving untold lists of side effects of mood altering drugs on TV and Radio, when such side effects are a contributing factor in such bloodshed the media avoids discussing it! Why? Columbine, Virginia Tec, Arizona, and now a Batman premier should raise a flag as to how society is being poisoned by the drug companies. Those limitless disclaimers have real meaning now! Ultimately the media is working with the United Nations and Obama to disarm America, the last vestige of freedoms! But more and more happy drugs? No problem.

This story was interesting. Allegedly, he was heavily medicated during his first court appearance. That is offensive. On the other hand, if they didn't drug him up, he probably wouldn't have sat there quietly.

Anonymous Coward commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.

> That is false. I can evaluate someone’s personality type solely based on

> appearance.

Hmmn! That is only one step removed from saying a person can pick up the feelings floating around in someone's head.

Just because science can't pick these things up doesn't mean they don't exist.

Here is another interesting bit. Allegedly, he mailed a notebook to a Colorado university psychiatrist, before the crime.

If Holmes already had a relationship with a psychiatrist, that is strong evidence that he was already taking drugs at the time of the murders. If that's true, the victims' relatives should file a wrongful death claim against the drug manufacturer.


Robert Ferguson commented on NCAA Gives Penn State A Slap On The Wrist.
I think the "sanctions" are very lenient! What happened at Penn State shows how powerful college football is. I am a part of it, I love college football. But Paterno and several other powerful figures looked the other way while Sandusky was abusing kids. They did that because they didn't want the bad publicity. The media keeps using the word "harsh" to describe the sanctions. Penn State will be profitable again next year! Child rape was placed second to profit and this slap on the wrist is "harsh"? You have got to e freakin kidding me!

Naval commented on AngelList - WTF?.
We already have a category for developers - it's called Talent at http://angel.co/talent. Half of our site is devoted to it. The Needs page that you point to is just data gathering to see what category we should launch next.

Anonymous Coward commented on Time-Warner Cable Gross Negligence.
Off-topic, but FSK might want to have a look at the below article by Dr Paul Craig Roberts.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/07/02/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate-escape-from-accountability/

FSK will definitely choke on what is being discussed. It is about corporations being exempt from the cost of government regulations. Governments pay corporations for the cost of abiding to regulations!

Most "free trade agreements" are actually corporate welfare agreements. This isn't anything new.

Politicians have been using "treaties" as a way to sneak through laws that wouldn't otherwise pass.

Anonymous Coward commented on Time-Warner Cable Gross Negligence.

I should really email this to you instead.

I came across the following speech by your beloved President ODumber.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/jul/15/picketvideo-obama-if-youve-got-business-you-didnt-/

I'm sure you will read the words of ODumber and say "Bless! What a nice man! What an honor to have him as our President."

Meanwhile the unelected (20% doesn't count) Prime Minster David Cam-Moron is asking foreign countries to invest in the UK.

I heard about that. It was widely cited. I was planning a post on that subject.

That's a common pro-State troll argument for "Taxation is not theft!" You use State roads. You benefit from State infrastructure. State police protect your property. Therefore, the State owns you and your labor, and you should be happy paying high taxes.

That's also typical parasite thinking. A parasite/politician is morally equivalent to someone who built a successful business, despite a crushing burden of taxation of regulations.

Neither Obama nor Romney have worked an honest day of work in their life. Obama was a lawyer and a politician. Romney was a bankster, a hedge fund manager. Hedge funds receive massive State subsidies, via negative real interest rates.

Piwik is showing a *LOT* of Google searches for "Time Warner Cable Error Code E-8". Time-Warner has a serious customer support problem.


Anonymous Coward commented on US Government Defeats Julian Heicklen.
I don't know if you are reading your email.

A policeman hit Ian Tomlinson with a baton as he was walking in the opposite direction and had his back to the policeman. Ian died shortly afterwards. Photographic evidence is available.

The Crown Prosecution Service delayed until the time-limit for assault was passed. So the policeman could only be tried for manslaughter and he got off because he couldn't have know beating Ian with a baton would actually kill him!

The jury weren't told of the policeman's violent history and long records of complaints.

See

http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/jonathan-moses/who-killed-ian-tomlinson-rogue-cop-or-britain-and-her-culture-of-policing-

Anonymous Coward commented on US Government Defeats Julian Heicklen.

Video of police violence against Ian Tomlinson who later died.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ

I stopped reading my fsk2006@gmail address. I meant to set up the free gmail for my blog.


Anonymous Coward commented on Job Search Rudeness - No Response After Interview.
Yes, I noticed this several years ago when I was applying for tech jobs. Despite doing well in technical tests and having quite a lot of my time taken up with multiple interviews, several employers didn't get back to me.

I usually don't like to name and shame, but Google was quite blatant. Immediately after my set of face-to-face interviews a woman led me into an office to tell me that if I didn't get the job, Google wouldn't contact me at all. If I wanted to find out the status I would have to contact them.

Unfortunately it seems the recruiter who arranged my interviews was not responsive at all.

Then *several years later* Google contact me out of the blue and told me I had done well in those interviews and that it was a close decision. They asked me if I wanted to go through their interview process again. I asked them if the preliminary interviews could be skipped as I had already passed them (obviously as their last set of interviews was staged over different days) and they said that wasn't possible. So I turned down their offer of more interviews years ago my first set.

If Google hadn't been so rude the first time around and just sent an email to me letting me know I didn't get the job, my decision may have been different.

Anonymous Coward commented on Job Search Rudeness - No Response After Interview.

I'm obviously have some technical competency as I sell my own software and do get a fair number of sales. Most of my clients tell me how wonderful my software is.

Google blew a raspberry in my face or rather couldn't be bothered to tell me I didn't get the job after I wasted my time visiting them. Rude. Lazy. Arrogant.

Anonymous Coward commented on Job Search Rudeness - No Response After Interview.

Some of the interviews I had at Google were tedious hoop jumping and the questions weren't really about real software development. One of the questions was some academic bullshit formal analysis of software. Anyway despite it being bullshit I got the question correct.

The first interviewer liked me and said so.

Anyway after jumping through all their hoops (which quite frankly after a few other job interviews starts to get tedious), it was a shock to be blatantly told Google couldn't be bothered to contact me if I didn't get the job.

It was arrogant. It was lazy. It was disorganized. Surely if these bozos can index the Internet, a recruiter can create a simple list of interviewed candidates and email them if they don't get the job.

Obviously such as simple task is above Google.

They don't respect the time of candidates to visit their offices and answer questions.

It is pointless getting the answers correct if they just blow a big raspberry in your face or rather don't owe you the courtesy of sending you one email.

I Have A Comment Spam Problem Again

When I first installed the GrowMap Anti-Spam Plugin, it really cut down on my comment spam.  Some spammers updated their spam script, to account for that plugin.

I’m going to have to try something else.  Any suggestions?

Option #1: Try another plugin.

Option #2: Edit the growmap plugin, so that the bots won’t work anymore.

Job Search Rudeness – No Response After Interview

In my current jobsearch, I’ve noticed increasing rudeness by employers.  After going for an on-site interview, almost nobody gets back to me, even with a form rejection letter.

I understand that a ton of resumes are submitted for each job opening.  An employer has no obligation to respond to each one.

However, once you progress to an on-site interivew or a phone screen, the employer should at least say “Thanks for applying, but we chose someone else.”

There is one situation where delay is sensible.  For the #2 or #3 candidate, wait until the #1 candidate accepts the offer, before rejecting the #2 or #3 candidate.

Sometimes, if I thought the interview went well, I ask what’s my status.  Even then, I don’t get a response.

Basically, “no response = rejection”.  Even if I think I aced an interview, I should keep sending out resumes and going on interviews until I get an offer.

I’m surprised by increasing rudeness by employers.  Even after an on-site interview, almost nobody responds with “Thanks for applying, but we chose someone else.”

US Government Defeats Julian Heicklen

This story was interesting.  Julian Heicklen was an activist.  He handed out “jury nullification” pamphlets in front of courthouses.

“Jury nullification” means that a jury has the right and obligation to vote “not guilty” if they disapprove of the law, even if they believe the person did it.

Judges don’t like jury nullification.  Insiders see it as a threat to their power, if jurors think for themselves and exercise their jury nullification power.  Most “statutory crime” or “victimless crime” would not be enforceable, if juries nullified.

In a trial for “possession of a gun without a license” or “possession of marijuana” or “tax evasion”, jury nullification is appropriate.  It is wrong to send people to prison for that.  They are fake crimes.  If juries were aware of their nullification power, they would refuse to convict.

The practice of jury selection or “voir dire” started to prevent jury nullification.  By screening jurors based on their beliefs, any jurors who might vote “not guilty” are excluded.  “Voir dire” is a French phrase that means “jury tampering”.

Even though the law was never explictly changed, the Supreme Court and appeals courts have ruled that defense lawyers are barred from mentioning jury nullification.  Even as a pro se defendant, you can be found in “contempt” for mentioning jury nullification.

Julian Heicklen was facing multiple criminal prosecutions, for handing out “jury nullification” pamphlets.  If you take a literal interpretation of the 1st Amendment, handing out pamphlets in front of a courthouse should be obviously legal.

Instead of fighting in court, he decided to flee to Israel.

I’m disappointed.  If appeals courts and the Supreme Court weren’t corrupt, Julian Heicklen should have won.  However, they are corrupt.  He didn’t like his odds and he didn’t want to spend a lot of time in jail.

More and more people are saying “It’s time to leave the USA!”  Where is better?  For personal reasons, I can’t move right now.  It’s something to seriously consider.

I’m disappointed that Julian Heicklen didn’t try to fight and establish a favorable precedent.  On the other hand, I understand that the US government is nearly completely hopeless, and fleeing may be the best option.

Time-Warner Cable Gross Negligence

A year ago, I “upgraded” my Time-Warner cable box to an HD box.  It was an “upgrade” and not an upgrade, because it was a buggy POS.

Every time Time-Warner makes a software update and pushes it to the box, they break a bunch of stuff.  Does anyone working there know how to do QA?

They push out the software updates in the middle of the night, even if it interrupts something I was recording.

They put out another update this week.  It crashed hard.  This time, the cable box stopped working completely.  It got stuck on “E-8″.

After some searching, “E-8″ is a common error code, but there’s zero information for what it means.  What’s the point of displaying an error code, if it doesn’t mean anything?

After some customer support, Time-Warner said that I needed a new cable box.

That’s really suspicious.  They push out a software update, and the cable box breaks?  That sounds like a software problem, and not a hardware problem.

I did notice a “burning plastic smell” from the cable box sometimes.  Maybe it was defective?  It still reflects badly on Time-Warner, that the cable box they gave me a year ago was defective.

Unfortunately, Time-Warner has a State-backed monopoly.  It’s illegal for another business to offer cable service in their territory.  Verizion FiOS will add some competition, but it isn’t available yet where I live.

AngelList – WTF?

I’ve noticed more and more flaky startups.  There are very few startups with a good business plan and good execution.

When someone says “startup”, they usually mean an Internet-based business or a software business.

In other areas of the economy, there are severe regulations and restrictions.  The Internet is relatively unregulated, leading to many people starting businesses there.  Even though the auto industry is incredibly inefficient, there aren’t many car manufacturing startups.  The regulations are a huge obstacle.

This page was interesting.  That shows a lack of understanding, for what makes a successful startup.

Look at that page.  What’s missing?

They have every sort of other service listed.  They have sales, accounting, marketing, and lawyers.  There’s a huge hole.

They don’t mention “programmers”!  That’s the #1 key ingredient for a successful software business.  They do have a category for “outsourced development”, which is usually a waste.  I’ve heard plenty of stories where someone spent a lot of money on an outsourcing team, but they didn’t deliver or delivered something lousy.

They do have a category for “co-founders”, but it really should be split into “technical co-founders” and “non-technical co-founders”.  It would be nice to find someone with a decent business plan who wanted to hire me to make version 1.0 of the product, but I haven’t seen that.

The “magic winning formula” for a successful startup is one guy who implements version 1.0 of the product, and one guy who focuses on raising capital and getting customers and getting revenue.

Normally, the programmer has high logical intelligence and low emotional intelligence, and the non-technical founder has high emotional intelligence and low logical intelligence.  I’ve seen startups where the founder had high logical intelligence but the programmers had high emotional intelligence.  That’s the formula for disaster, where the programmers waste resources while making excuses.

I’m surprised that few founders or VCs get it.  If you want a successful startup, you need a high-ability programmer implementing your product.  If you treat programmers like interchangable cogs, you aren’t going to succeed.  If you aren’t computer literate, you’re almost guaranteed to hire a good faker, rather than a genuinely great programmer.

I was offended that AngelList didn’t mention “programmers” or “technical co-founder” as a category.

NCAA Gives Penn State A Slap On The Wrist

This story is interesting.  The NCAA announced sanctions against Penn State. The mainstream media is saying “Oooh! That’ll show them!” The sanctions actually are a slap on the wrist.

There was a $60M fine.  That sounds like a lot of money.  It’s approximately 1 year of football revenues for Penn State.  Whenever a corporation is fined, the number sounds big, but it’s usually negligible compared to overall revenues.

There was a 4 year bowl ban.  That’s pretty lenient.  I expected a 10-20 year ban.

There was a cut in scholarships for 4 years, which is pretty lenient.  Again, I expected 10-20 years.

They eliminated 12 years of Joe Paterno victories from the record books.  That has no real financial penalty.  Allegedly, they’re going back to when Joe Paterno and Penn State started covering up Sandusky’s problem.

There was one lenient bit.  Current Penn State football players may transfer schools without penalty.  Normally, the NCAA makes students sit out a year, unless the school waives the penalty.  Usually schools treat their football players as property, and block transfers.  However, it’s almost August.  It’s probably too late for to switch schools for the 2012 season.

It isn’t clear if the NCAA had this authority at all.  The crime didn’t involve any football players.  Sandusky didn’t explicit break any rule regarding student athletes.  The penalty is imposed under a generic morality clause, and not something specific.

However, Penn State’s new leaders are eager to accept the penalty and move on.  It’s relatively lenient.  It’s morality laundering.  They did some bad things, but now got penalized, so it’s OK.

Overall, the penalty against Penn State was lenient.  $60M is a drop in the bucket, compared to money they make off college football.  A 4 year penalty isn’t that long.  I expected 10-20 years.

Reader Mail – 07/15/2012 To 07/21/2012

My post on the Colorado mass murder James Eagan Holmes was an unexpected SEO success. Maybe my blog has a high base PageRank now, and most other pages copy press releases? Normally, Saturday is a slow day, but that was my #1 day according to Piwik.

However, I was disturbed by one person who Googled "James Eagan Holmes My Hero".


SteveOC64 commented on node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.
I came here following a google search on node.js ... and stayed for the crazy :)

Awesome blogging work, every word of which resonantes 100% with this reader. A perfect description of the current state of affairs. I love the way you have managed to tie together banksters, cycling cheats, gold bugging, psychotic employment practices .. and coding conventions all into a single unified field theory of everything that is broken.

Great stuff!! Looking forward to reading future posts regularly. Ill order the book if you ever get it published too .. dont hold back.

On the subject of node .. its just another tool, and it does have its place. Its a good fit for some problem domains. Its not a good fit for builing big, stateless, monolithic things - thats where LAMP excels. Its a good fit for small, responsive things that hold a lot of state information and communicate with each other with low overhead. Recommend that you have another look, perhaps with a different problem set in mind that is a better fit for the tools. It starts to make more sense when you are working with other tools like SocketStream, Redis, NPM, etc, etc, etc.

If LAMP or ASP.NET was a Mack truck that hauls websites, Node and friends is a bucket of generic lego blocks that can also build some web apps .. or a robot ... or a light saber. Apples and oranges. Its not entirely a tool for building big web apps.

On the subject of tools in general .. I always like to keep in mind that a computer is a computer, machine code and IO is real ... everything else is an artificial construct. There is really no such thing as an object, a file, a registry entry, a Word document, a DLL, a thread, a domain, a socket, a process, etc.

If confronted by a fanboi of any of these artificial constructs, simply crack open a computer case and ask them to point out where these 'things' physically exist. They dont, of course. They only exist in people's heads.

Computer languages are just another layer of abstraction, and best used with that in mind. As long as you keep your head out of the hype, you can use any number of tools to get real work done. At the end of the day, machine code has to execute, and something gets output on the IO bus. Everything in between those events is an abstraction. Some abstractions are more appropriate to the problem domain than others, but it all comes down to machine code and IO in the end.

Node falls into this category, along with every other tool out there. Use it, enjoy it, go make some real things happen.

Jobs - I notice that a lot of job adverts these days dont even ask for qualifications - they want to see your github repo instead. That makes a tonne more sense to me.

The current layer of crap in the job market is a reflection of the evolution of tools and abstractions. We used to have C64's, AppleIIs, AtariSTs and Amigas that people cut their teeth on .. and these people gave us the PC, Linux, the Internet, Mars missions and everything that works. Now we have commerce graduates with a cert IV in MS-Office designing systems with no idea how they fit together.

Its fertile ground for idiots to thrive in.

It should be compuslory for every child to spend 10,000 hours writing apps on arduinos, or rasberry Pi's before being allowed anywhere near a computer system, let alone make decisions about system design.

According to piwik, most of the "node.js sucks!" traffic is bounces. I didn't know that any of them stuck around. I need to write some custom SQL that queries the piwik database.

I still don't see how node.js outperforms PHP or C/C++. In node.js, you're doing stuff that the OS normally handles for you.

If I was writing a serious web application, version 1.0 would be in PHP. If that wasn't fast enough, I'd go to C/C++.

I want a language that lets me utilize multiple cores effectively.

It may seem awesome to do work normally handled by the OS. It's a waste of time. I'm not going to manage thread priority better than a highly tuned OS.

If you want to maximize the number of "Hello world!" operations per second, that's one thing. It's another thing to write something with complicated business logic.

At the interview that motivated this post, they had a website with static content and a few forms. In that context, using node.js is wrong.

If I see a job ad that mentions Rails or node.js, I mentally translate to "We're a bunch of fruitcakes. Don't waste your time applying."

I don't have a github profile. Why should that be a requirement? When I see a doctor, I always ask how much surgery he performs for free in his spare time. I don't mention my blog on my resume, because clueless people would reject me based on my observations.

In my current job search, most job ads have a laundry list of languages listed as requirements. For example, "5 years Java" or "5 years PHP" or "5 years .NET". I don't get past the keyword screening phase, because most of my experience is in C/C++, which nobody uses anymore. If a job ad says "0-2 years Java required", then I get rejected because I'm "overqualified".

Node.js hype and banksters stealing trillions of dollars are two closely related ideas. Watch "American Greed" on the Communism Channel (CNBC), and watch the personality type of the people running Ponzi scams. The people who love Rails and node.js have the same personality type. I avoid working for scum. Therefore, I don't mind avoiding node.js and Rails jobs.

My favorite is when an interview prescreen demands you solve a puzzle or programming assignment. Most of the time, I do the assignment, I know I aced it, and I don't even get an interview. I should refuse out of principle, but I've got nothing better to do, and maybe there really are a lot of unqualified losers out there.

Another favorite is the multiple-choice prescreening test with errors. I know that C++ doesn't have closures, but this multiple choice question assumes that C++ does, and "WTF? C++ doesn't have closures!" isn't one of the choices. The person who wrote the question is obviously clueless, and I have to guess which error they made. I also love the questions on multiple inheritance and template specialization, which I never would use and would look it up if I did need it.

I have more than 10 years of experience, a CS degree from a highly ranked University, and every job screening asks me basic skills questions. Is your stupid programming assignment going to measure more than my 4 year CS degree and 10 years of experience?

The trolls on this post will say I'm not having career success because I'm a pathetic loser. I know I'm on the top end of the ability scale. We live in a society of inverted values. I'm really intelligent and honest and not a wimp. That's a liability and not an asset. No manager wants a highly skilled subordinate, because he's insecure about his own job. My long-term goal is to get my own business going. In the meantime, I'm sticking with the wage slave track.

The leaders are criminally insane. Intelligent and hardworking people struggle to find any job at all. That's the reason the economy is collapsing.

SteveOC64 commented on node.js Is VB6 - Does node.js Suck?.

Good stuff - thanks for the reply.

"I still don’t see how node.js outperforms PHP or C/C++. In node.js, you’re doing stuff that the OS normally handles for you."

Totally correct. It doesnt outperform either (esp C), and it cant. If you have a perfectly good system written in PHP (or anything else), then re-writing it in javascript is meaningless.

All the 'cool' factors in node - super fast async non-blocking blah blah blah ... well, you are right, thats what OS's do, and do really well. Its a pointless argument, directed at impressing the clueless. Thats not

Performance is one factor amongst many. Development time and agility is another factor I suppose. PHP on a LAMP stack suits me as the best all-round environment for getting things done 99% of the time. C will always be my preferred tool for doing things right. I am using node for an MMO game control system, because it fits the problem really well, and its fun to program in. Its all just code anyway. Code is a means to an end.

One thing that is rarely spoken out loud too - Coding is easy, and should be fun. For example - I often prefer to ride my bike everywhere, because its much more fun than driving. Its not always about being efficient, or safe, or sensible. I will code in any enviroment that is fun. If the environment needs to be fought, then I cant be f*&cjked trying to make a pig sing like a bird. Life is too short to be working with bad implementations of bad ideas.

The multi-core / multi-threaded scalability thing. It is not a good idea to put too much into a single threaded node program if scalability is a concern. I dont think its meant for that at all. If "the system" you were developing was divided up into dozens of small independent processes that all talked to each other, then node might be a good fit. Depends.

The async thing is relatively important. Its certainly not a new idea though.

I have written perfectly good async event-driven programs in C before ... its not about the language or performance so much, as the mode of thinking that it places you in. Coming at a problem from a completely different angle can sometimes shed light on more elegant solutions. Depends really. No silver bullets out there. Im sure you have been around the block a few times to see so-called "systems" that have been cobbled together ... where no amount of extra CPU cores will fix the fundamental mess that has been allowed to grow.

Choice of language and tools can, by themselves, destroy a project ... but they can never, by themselves, create good solutions. That, as you know, requires experience. There is no subsitute for experience.

And thats one of the factors that is royally f*^cking everything up at the moment. Experience is no longer valued. Buzzword compliance beats common sense.

Hype based economics that rewards stupidity and stifles anything honest and useful. Expressing honest opinions .. attempting to apply common sense and good engineering practices ... get pushed aside in favour of feel-good nonsense. The whole so-called "workplace" has turned into a putrid real life version of facebook - a massive popularity contest where everyone who plays by the rules is a winner.

Agree with everything the clueless bosses say, sweep problems under the carpet where they cant be seen, turn a blind eye to corruption .... and smile as you follow the herd off the cliff life a good little worker.

I love programming - I have been coding now for nearly 30 years in all sorts of projects. At least 6 days a week, every week for 30 years. Without a break. I am still learning, still loving it, and still further than ever from being bored. I find it ridiculously easy to program, and endlessly fascinating.

But I WONT do it for a living any more. Its not worth dealing with the unqualified idiots that have injected themselves into this industry, and completely corrupted this beautiful form or art.

What I see happening everywhere in corporate land now is so disheartening. This is NOT what I dedicated my life to. Its the complete opposite of everything I believe in. I willl NOT - EVER - write another single line of code to help out these liars and human filth ever again. I wont do it. I will only take on honest real work like working on bicycles, or harvesting crops, or cooking, or cleaning dishes, or personal training .. or whatever. I wont sell my time writing programs though. Fixing other people's problems that they are too stupid to see for themselves. Not worth it for any money.

'They' want me to go work on the derivatives trading desk ... ha ! I dont think so. Rather clean toilets for an honest dollar thank you.

Good engineering practices make dishonest and fraudulent activiities difficult .. and so are not welcome in this "brave new way of working".

When your OS dishes out time slices, it typically uses a minimum of 20-50ms. When I was working on a Windows trading system, I found a way to configure the time slice to 1ms, which would slash any OS-caused delay, but 1ms was the minimum. On Linux, you probably can get any OS time slice interval you want.

The idea of "manually manage callback timing" goes back to the days when you didn't have an OS to do it for you.

"Threads and processes have overhead" is also false. Apache keeps a pool of idle threads and processes, so it doesn't need to create a new one for each request.

I've worked for derivatives traders. It was OK, but one of the bosses was a real Madoff type, leading to the obvious problem.

Financial software has zero real economic value. I would do it, because I have to get the best job I can for myself.

Traders say "We have a 'Type A' personality.", which is a code phrase for "We're abusive jerks."

I like computers and programming. My problem is working for scum.

It is frustrating looking for a job, because "# of years in X language" is more important than my actual ability. I know that in a few weeks or less, I'd be more productive than a mediocre person with 10 years of experience in that language. However, I don't make it past the keyword screening.

There's one "advantage" of filtering resumes by keywords and # of years experience in each language. That enables a clueless twit to filter resumes. Headhunters promote the idea that "# years in each language" matters, because it enables them to pretend to be adding value.

If node.js is a new "hot" buzzword, then all the early adopters get a huge career boost. When employers demand "2 years node.js experience", then all the early adopters are set.

This also encourages lying. If I lie and say I have the proper keywords, then I make it past the initial screen and may get hired. It was a silly requirement anyway, so it doesn't matter when I do get hired.

An honest person gets filtered out at the keyword screening phrase. A dishonest person submits a different resume for each job, one that's a perfect keyword match. Dishonest people have an advantage over honest people.

I won't get full value for my labor until I have my own business. Even if I have my own successful business, most of the taxes I pay support evil people. The only way fully out is agorism. Then, you minimize the amount your labor supports evil.


Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.
Using psychopaths and parasites makes for good television ratings. It's embarrassing even watching Australia's 'Master Chef' where the contestants are turned into sycophants and the chefs are hailed as gods. The judges get paid a fortune to make up the rules, eat, grow bigger jowls, judge and generally feel superior to others. But Gordon Ramsay is a true psychopath. I have studied psychology and criminal profiling. He ticks every box. Even down to his opinion of animals and their purpose for being. He also displays no respect at all for any other living being. It's not in what he tells us, it's in his actions.

Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.

Scientists are working to find the psychopath gene. They have discovered a gene they call the 'warrior' gene (for want of a less heroic sounding name), which is present in abusers. But they are still searching for the actual gene that causes a person to be born without a conscience; incapable of empathy or remorse. The Ted Bundys and the Ivan Milats of this world. A person can't outgrow this, or be rehabilitated, because this is how they're wired from birth.

My hope is that one day they will be able to isolate the psychopath gene so they can test early in pregnancy and nip it in the bud, so to speak.

It is interesting that there is a higher percentage of psychopaths among CEO's than in the general population. Four times as high. I'd be interested to find out how it compares between right and left wing politicians. Also the comparison of prison inmates to wardens.

Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.

FSK you say 'all taxation is theft'? Taxes pay for the building of roads and railways, they pay for our police service and armed forces. I think it would be a selfish and individualistic society if no one paid taxes. It also helps the poor and jobless.

It isn't genetic. A lot of personality type is learned from your parents. If the father is parasitic/psychopathic, then male children will emulate him.

In our society, the criminally insane evil person is held as the role model. One example is Bernard Madoff.

It isn't "4x higher". Nearly all the leaders are criminally insane, or are emotionally weak people that are easy to abuse.

All the leaders are criminally insane. That's the role model held out as the idea, so many people copy it. It's a serious problem.

The "psychopath problem" is the #1 reason the economy is falling apart. All the stupid laws and taxes and regulations benefit the evil insiders, at the expense of someone intelligent trying to grow a business.

Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.

From the university of Sydney: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/

Pamela commented on Kitchen Nightmares Observations - Burger Kitchen Part 1.

We need to be careful not to wander too far into the land on conspiracy theories here. The numbers of people carrying the psychopath gene probably vary a lot, and they're not all serial killers but they are quite capable. The only thing that would stop them would be because they want to avoid prison. They're not stupid. Although, like the rest of society, some are more intelligent than others.

I believe it is genetic, but the behaviour of the individual depends on his upbringing. That is probably the thing that could push him (or her) to perpetrate real harm to other sentient beings.

There's only two reasons that evil people sometimes make "good" leaders. When all the current leaders are evil, an honest person won't fit in. They promote the myth "Evil people make the best leaders!" to suit their own agenda, and because evil people will ruin any honest person competing with them.

If the honest people are emotionally weak, then an evil person is needed to organize them. Evil people make sure that everyone else is easy to manipulate.

"Evil people make good leaders!" is not natural. It's a symptom of everyone being partially insane.

If I wrote a research paper saying "Evil people make great leaders!", then evil people will give me a big research grant.

Evil leaders cooperating leads to the same outcome as a massively coordinated evil conspiracy.

Also, all taxation is theft. When you learn to think clearly, you'll see that roads and police can be handled without a government violence monopoly forcing people to pay. In the present, most spending on roads and police is waste and pork. Roads and police are a tiny fraction of the government's budget. Most State spending is waste and corruption.

A tiny fraction of the government's budget is spent on useful things. That doesn't justify the massive taxation extortion racket.


The Dag commented on Microsoft Sucks - XmlSerializer Exception.
Unfortunately I don't think the competition is any better.

I think Microsoft has done a lot of good work with the .net framework. It is by far the best framework I have worked with. But there are rotten bits, and the xml serialization is for me one of the worst.

Not just that it's buggy. I landed here because I needed to vent after XmlSerializer.Serialize completed without exceptions - but wrote INVALID XML! But really, xml serialization in .net is flawed from the design up.

If you use the standard serialization, all types involved must be public. They must all have parameterless constructors. If you have any abstract types you must statically describe which subclasses can occur (with XmlInclude attributes). So there went encapsulation and polymorphy out the window - but hey, it's only the 2 most important reasons why OOP is powerful!

What is good about it is that it's actually pretty fast. As far as I've understood the XmlSerializer is a facade and an implementation is generated (by Reflection.Emit) for the type you are working with. Then this is cached, so the next time your app creates a serializer for the same type it just instantiates the cached implementation and uses that behind the facade. Of course doing it this way is precisely why it can only ever work on public members.

The other serious limitation that makes .net xml serialization a no-go for me (when I get to decide) is that it cannot handle graphs correctly. Closed loops (a.other = b; b.other = a;) aren't even detected, it just hangs forever. And other graphs will serialize/deserialize, but be altered in the process (a.other = c; b.other = c; => a.other = c1; b.other = c2; i.e. two instances of c rather than an a and a b pointing to the same c).

There isn't even a good excuse for the latter shortcoming of the framework. Even I, who do not make a living making libraries that millions of others depend on, can keep track of a set of objects and figure out a way to represent a *reference* in XML. It's not even particularly difficult. Then they could of course use an attribute if they absolutely want to let people "inline" shared objects, even though that would lead to the deserialized graph being different from the one serialized. But BY DEFUALT it seems quite obvious that the deserialized graph ought to be the same as the one serialized, and Microsoft doesn't go out of it's way to warn developers about these serious limitations.

I made my own xml serializer once and did manage to handle loops and arbitrary graphs. Mine was based on private reflection and only serialized *fields*, since fields are the true state of an object. (A property is a pair of methods and if it isn't backed by a field, then it simply isn't part of the object state.) The type in question did have to have a default constructor, but this could at least be private so the bad consequences of this (not being able to ensure correct state of the object by testing ONLY that type) were controllable. Since it used reflection it was comparatively slow, but in every other aspect I think it was heaps better than what we get in the framework. If I could do that in under one week, why isn't the stuff we get better than it is?!?

You're always going to get the best results writing your own serialize/deserialize function.

In my case, I was using a DataTable with 100% text data. The library constructor was throwing an exception internally, which is lousy library design and shows that someone at Microsoft didn't QA properly.


Anonymous Coward commented on Test Driven Development - How Stupidity Spreads.
It is a long time since I did any C or C++ programming.

I do vaguely remember static variables in C. I wonder if that has anything to do with that question.

So long ago I can't remember!


Anonymous Coward commented on Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.
I don't think I have your email address anymore. So this is in lieu of sending you an email.

Some time ago, I was telling with a particularly aggressive and nasty group of people that were clearing about to steal from me. The law was very clear and against what they were doing. They wouldn't listen to me. They very wasting too much of my time.

So I thought it would be worth getting a lawyer to sort the matter out. The lawyer didn't have to look up any documents as I gave him the documentation and pointed out the relevant part. It took the lawyer all of 30 seconds to confirm the point of law.

The lawyer couldn't be bothered to take on board we were dealing with aggressive and nasty people. He padded he work and charged at least twice what he should have done. To make matters worse after we had sorted out the problem ourselves, he wanted a big chunk of cash just to "close the file". What a dishonest piece of work!

The lawyer wrote to the other side and pointed out what they were about to do was illegal.

So the other people then moved from out and out stealing to continuous harassment to get us to sign documents changing ownership for no or little money.

As the lawyer overcharged us we could hardly do back to him to finish sorting out the problem.

So we just got harassed more and harassed more until they finally decided to leave us alone.

If the lawyer was honest, didn't overcharge for a simple case and bothered to understand the problem, we would have been much better off.

Moral: Lawyers take vast sums of money and do a piss poor job. They only partially solve your problem.

I stopped reading my fsk2006@gmail.com address. I should set up the gmail @realfreemarket.org address.

Robert Ferguson commented on Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.

Hey FSK, do you ever go to lewrockwell.com? Good site. Liberty-minded people should start setting the term "anarcho-capitalism" as a standard and wearing it proudly. Isn't it interesting that the State, at a very young age, inculcates an association between the word "anarchy" and "violence" or evil? I resent the notion that government protects people from evil. Government is not the purveyor of "good", in fact, in the entirety of human history, governments have been the greatest forces of evil, destruction and violence. I resent the assumption that any "good" one may possess comes only from the State. I believe that most people want to be productive, peaceful and free. I believe that those inclinations come from a natural order of human beings, not from State decree or force. I don't have the will to do my job and extend good will to others because the State "taught" me those values. The world is and always will be an imperfect place, bad people and bad things will always be a part of our world. The goal of human civilization has and never should been to have some authority defeat all evils, ithat is an absurd and unrealistic goal. State authority, given power under those auspices, always uses that authority in ways that contravene that very goal by enhancing evil and destruction!! Anarcho-capitalism or "agorism" is the only viable future of our species, it always has been. That is a society of free markets, and free lives.

I read lewrockwell.com once in awhile. I'm looking for more advanced freedom-oriented reading material.

Some of the authors on lewrockwell.com still are advocating "within the system" reform. When I website has lots of different authors, I tend to lose interest, because some of the articles are good but many are lousy.

I got into arguments with the moderators on mises.org regarding The Compound Interest Paradox and they started censoring me. I stopped reading after that.

Robert Ferguson commented on Who Does Citigroup Think They're Fooling?.

Yes, I too have had frustrating interactions with "intellectuals" on Mises.org. "minarchists" I believe you have called them. I recently had an unfortunate, long, and protracted email exchange with professor Noam Chomsky about economics. Mr. Chomsky is heralded by the "Left" as a dissident and freeinded thinker, when it my assertion, and our recent exchange only solidified it, that he is in fact an approved "Gatekeeper" of State political "debate".

Why bother writing to Noam Chomsky? He promotes the pro-State troll version of "anarchy".

Don't trust an anarchist who works for the State. (MIT gets most of its funding from the State.)

It would be nice if someone like Noam Chomsky understood market anarchism or agorism. I'm not holding my breath waiting.

If Noam Chomsky wasn't describing stupid ideas as "anarchism", the mainstream media wouldn't be promoting him.

I've learned the hard way that you can't convince a fool. It's a waste of time and banging your head against a wall. That applies to Noam Chomsky or mises.org. (In case you didn't know, lewrockwell.com and mises.org are owned by the same person.)

I don't mind when someone disagrees, but I get very offended when someone censors me. Once that happens, I stop contributing to a forum/blog/website.

Also, I watched some videos of Noam Chomsky. He had the attitude of someone who thought he was a super-genius, even though he really wasn't that smart. It's the usual "good at promoting yourself" vs. "actually having good ideas".

Here's an interesting video of Noam Chomsky refuting "Libertarianism and Anarcho-Capitalism". My reaction to that video is "Noam Chomsky is obviously a clueless twit." You can tell he's a clueless douchebag by the tone of his voice. Actually, Noam Chomsky seems to be an intelligent person tricked into promoting evil, rather than someone completely evil like Bernard Madoff or Chuck Schumer. However, it makes no difference if you're evil on purpose, or if you're so clueless that you don't know any better.


Justin commented on Reader Mail - 07/08/2012 To 07/14/2012.
I think self publishing is a good idea, but everyone needs a good editor to make a quality book. I think the time it takes to get a book on the kindle or amazon website is much greater than it takes on lulu. Obviously the market on amazon is much bigger, so you could sell a book on lulu and try to market it yourself and use that seed money to try to get through the amazon process.

Based on what I read for Amazon Createspace, there's a very low barrier to getting on Amazon. You only have to give them a .doc/.pdf file.

Another advantage of Amazon Createspace is that you can simultaneously submit your book for print-on-demand and also Kindle. For Kindle, I can make the price $2 or $5 or something very low.

I'm going to edit it myself. There's no point paying $$ for another editor, unless someone wants to volunteer.

My goal is not "Make #1 on the bestseller list!" or even "Make enough that it can be my full-time job!" My goal would be "Earn enough to cover blog hosting costs, $20/month." That could be more viable than putting up ads.

Also on Kindle, I'd be available to people who search the Kindle store, but don't already read my blog.


Justin commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.
Perhaps you could use the adwords tools to find out what title would work best or what book topic would work best?

I'd be using the Amazon store and not Google, so that wouldn't be very relevant.

To be really cynical, the only point of the AdWords tool is to trick people into wasting money on Google ads.

I can see what Google keywords lead to people finding my blog. I'm disappointed that "node.js sucks!" is my most popular post, although that's mostly bounces.

gilliganscorner commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.

Why not become a financial advisor? There is a dearth of them who know:

1) The stock market is a scam.

2) Real interest rates are negative.

3) Taxation is theft.

4) A host of other analysis that suits your math background.

In addition, it is relatively cheap to start up. Have you tried your hand at building a dummy portfolio(s) on Yahoo finance to see how various strategies you come up with might work or not?

From sites like christmartenson.com and other "matrix breaking" sites, I have seen a real need for "real" financial advisors as opposed to the cookie cutter PFA's being cranked out.

Just two cents.

gilliganscorner commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.

I think an interesting title would be:

"Gutenberg V2.0: How the Internet Killed the State" and write it as "fiction" set 10-20 years into the future. You can explain how things were and posit fictional (read: real) solutions that worked to end the leviathan.

A financial adviser typically makes money by steering his client/victim into products that pay a commission. For example, if I trick you into buying a mutual fund with high fees, the fund manager gives me a big cut.

At some large banks, the salesmen are supposed to pressure clients into buying stock that the bank is trying to unload.

My honest investment advice is "buy gold and silver and take delivery". There isn't much commission to be earned doing that.

Actually, it isn't that easy to start an investment advice business. You need a State license to do it legally, which costs time and money.

There already was a book that does what you say. It's "Orwell's Revenge" by Peter Huber.

The Internet and cell phones give police an unprecedented power to spy on what people are doing. However, the Internet also gives individuals the unprecedented ability to share information outside of State media censorship. The "individuals share information" aspect is much more valuable than the spying aspect.

Your cell phone enables easy State spying. However, you don't have to carry your cell phone with you if you don't want to be tracked!

I'll stick with nonfiction for my first try. If I make at least $100 in sales I can try something else.

dionysusal commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.

I say do it. I’d definitely buy it. A suggestion: include plenty of interesting personal anecdotes to illustrate your points. Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt to have stuff about sexy, young vampires and werewolves. :P

It's good to include personal anecdotes, but I don't want to give away too much personal information.

Some of my personal anecdotes are totally bizarre. When I started taking Seroquel, it partially cured my color blindness! That's one reason I go along with taking it, even though I had a severe negative reaction to other drugs.

Cpt. Capitalism commented on FSK Asks - Writing A Book?.

I would strongly recommend Createspace. Gives you the Amazon and Kindle platform to sell on. No reason to go elsewhere. I have two books through them and I've had no problems with the TOS or payment.

That's what I was planning. Any suggestions on price? I was planning to do both Kindle and print-on-demand. I was thinking of either $2 or $5 for the Kindle version, and aiming for a 25%-50% royalty rate on the hard copy.


Anonymous Coward commented on NHL Owners Cancel Next Season.
Hey FSK, something strange happened to me a few days ago. I can't tell anybody I know in real life as they will think I'm stupid. Send me an email.

I still have my old Blogger E-Mail fsk2006@gmail.com. I meant to set up the ad-supported gmail here, but never got around to it.

You also could just leave a comment.

I've seen some crazy things, even stuff I didn't mention here.


Robert Ferguson commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.
Great post FSK! You kicked banker ass today. People need to see the pro-state banker propaganda on precious metals dismantled piece by piece, as it is offered. Fancy statistics, bogus charts, and complex, euphemistic terms like "quantitative easing" are used to promote the State financial system, just as they are used to discourage using precious metals. It is always interesting to see the new tricks being used. The most important truths in life are straightforward and consistent, like sound math. It should be a red flag to people when the banksters constantly change their terms and change their analysis formulas. That should be a HUGE red flag that they are full of shit!!

I was offended by the flagrant statistics abuse on that Business Insider propaganda article. I know that gold crushed all other investments over the past 10-15 years.

Another example is the Black-Scholes formula and other derivatives calculations. A big lie is hidden by complex Mathematics.

However, it doesn't do much good, if I'm only educating my 200-500 regular readers.

Justin commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

For #1, people are confused because calling gold an inflation hedge means gold is a linear inflation hedge in their minds. So if they print 10% more currency then the price of gold should rise 10%, but that simply isn't the case. Gold's price is linearly correlated with "Currency Confidence." Its non linearly correlated with the number of dollars.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

I will believe what FSK says about gold on the day he/she goes out with a big gold medallion around his/her neck.

And while we are talking about precious metals, I should mention the silver Mexican Libertad. It simply a very detailed beautiful coin. The mountains on the coin represent two lovers that killed themselves when they thought the other was killed. The man went off to fight a distant tribe.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertad_%28coin%29

The Royal Mint has produced some interesting new coins of late. It is a pity, I can't find images of the 2011 Britannia Masterpiece in gold anymore. Only the silver one is shown now.

Shame I can't afford any of them.

See

http://www.royalmint.com/discover/britannia/britannia-masterpiece

http://www.royalmint.com/shop/r/rmm12gp

If you do invest in gold, don't let other people know you have it. Otherwise, you risk being robbed.

I am going to invest in physical someday, but not yet.

For #1, the main error of their chart was that CPI != inflation.

"Rate of money printing" does not equal "inflation", because the velocity of money can change. In a hyperinflationary spiral, the velocity of money goes to infinity, as people rush to spend money as soon as they get it.

Also, real growth in the economy can hide monetary inflation. If the real growth in the economy is 10% and 10% more money is printed, then prices will remain approximately the same. Insiders still stole 10% of the value of the economy by printing money, but real growth helps hide the theft. (If there was no inflation, people would have been rewarded with a 10% price decline. Instead, insiders stole the value represented by the growth.) In the present, the economy is crashing, exacerbating inflation.

Robert Ferguson commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

That last comment from "Justin" was clearly spam, complete with a link to a merchant web site. "wearing a gold medallion" around your neck is completely missing the point of both the post and my comments. I know you know that FSK, but I appreciate your humble, benefit of the doubt consistency with posters of comments. I have seen people leave very nasty comments but you never get flustered. Back to the issue of precious metals, storage and protecting them from criminals wearing a mask and criminals wearing a badge, with a strong emphasis on the latter in my opinion. Any new thoughts on that? Safe buried underground somewhere?

You mean "Anonymous Coward" and not "Justin", the link to the royalmint website. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. There is some really bad spam that I filter out.

If you want gold or silver, generic bullion/rounds/bars is best. Never pay a premium of more than 5%-10% to spot. There are some costs associated with minting and selling coins, so you never should expect to buy for spot.

The worst comments were on the node.js posts! The more hostile the comments, the more important the subject.

One possibility is buried underground somewhere. That isn't foolproof, if the criminals know you have it. Ordinary criminals can hold you or your wife and children at gunpoint, demanding you give up your stash. Police can search your home at their leisure, so they can find your stash. Police can demand you give up your stash, or hold you in prison indefinitely if you refuse to give it up.

I've heard stories of a guy who had his gold carefully hidden. Criminals threatened him and his wife at gunpoint, demanding he give up his stash. The criminals obviously knew about the stash, because they weren't satisfied when he gave them a little.

When you buy gold from a State-licensed dealer, records are kept and that information may be leaked.

Unfortunately, there's no safe investment. With State paper, you're guaranteed to be robbed. With physical gold and silver, you also are at risk for theft.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

My last post was so clearly over-the-top that I hoped nobody would take it seriously.

When I was a teenager, there was a television comedy programme called "Three of a kind". One of the characters wore a gold medallion on top of a hairy chest and open shirt. He was called The Medallion Man. Obviously this character amused me and I wanted to resurrect something of him on this blog.

The links I gave are to the Royal Mint. Obviously I'm not associated with the Royal Mint. The coins I referenced are particularly beautiful gold and silver coins.

Although it is not the topic of this blog, colloidal silver is thought to be effective in killing bacteria, fungus (including yeasts) and viruses.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

I hear China and Russia are buying up gold.

If there is ever a currency collapse and something new resurrected, Russia may have a strong hand. Russia, of course, has plenty of oil and gas as well.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

If Robert looked at the last two links I gave, he would realize it is unlikely they are spam.

The coins referenced are too expensive to buy. They are very limited editions in gold and one of them has already sold out.

It is only millionaires that could buy these type of coins (at 25, 000 GBP) and I doubt millionaires would provide huge volume sales that warrant spam.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

A SENSIBLE COMMENT FROM ME AT LAST

====================================

I should post a sensible comment, but now I guess FSK will be getting frayed by my multiple comments.

1) I believe that gold and silver are a store of value. Silver has many industrial uses as well. They have a place in a diversified portfolio. One Kitco poster recommends 1/3 cash, 1/3 gold/silver and 1/3 shares.

2) Gold as a currency never worked. There just isn't enough liquidity. Gold and silver stand a better chance of working as there is more silver.

3) The solution to our problems is to take banks out of the money creation business. Government should create debt-free money. The exponentially growing debt will never be paid off. There isn't enough money in the world to pay off the debt and even if you did pay off the debt, the loss of circulating money would crash the economy.

4) Governments should create money from thin air at a small amount every year.

5) Banks get a free ride on loaning money to government as it is created from thin air.

6) The real economy always grows slower than exponentially increasing payments on debt.

Robert Ferguson commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

Yes I just saw it was "anonymous coward" and not "Justin"! His post was actually meaningful, sorry Justin! Lol. :) In life there are always risks, but the impending collapse of the State is inevitable and it forces us, in my view, to make some kind of choice. There may be no "great" choice, only the "best" choice.

Government-issued gold and silver coins tend to be more expensive than generic bullion. Right now, American Eagles are a 5%-10% premium compared to generic bullion. When the State collapses, that premium may disappear.

Gold as money only failed due to State manipulation. That's an important lie, that "The free market discredited the gold standard".

The Federal Reserve printed more gold-redeemable paper than gold they had, guaranteeing an eventual default.

In 1929-1932, the Federal Reserve tried inflating to bail out the banksters. The gold standard limited their ability to inflate, so it was abandoned. That probably was the goal from the beginning, via the usual "Problem! Reaction! Solution!"

On a gold standard, politicians rack up government debt, which cannot be repaid if gold delivery is required.

With gold as money, people can vote "no confidence" in the banking system, by holding physical gold. If you hold State paper money under your mattress, you still get robbed via inflation. Even if every single person in the USA cashed out their bank savings into paper money, banksters could still inflate and steal.

With metal as money, gold is used for large transactions, silver for medium transactions, and copper for change. You can get 1/10 or 1/4 or 1/2 oz silver coins from APMEX, which is good if you're using silver as barter money. APMEX fractional silver is a better deal than Shire Silver.

People who say "WTF? The economy is much large than the gold supply!" miss an important point. That assumes each ounce of gold changes hands once per year. One ounce of gold can support much more economic activity. Gold is a benchmark for price. As long as people have the right to convert to gold, that enforces honesty. People can always use other metals, based on supply and demand.

Silverware used to be made of silver, precisely because of its antibacterial properties. If you drink powdered silver dissolved in water, that always seemed pretty silly to me.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

Martin Armstrong has written an essay on gold. I'm just about to read it.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/693-2/2012-2/the-truth-about-gold-why-you-should-buy-it/

P.S. FSK you should watch Bill Still's documentary called "The Secret of Oz". It is on YouTube. It is very well made and starts off with tally sticks, the Roman Empire and the American civil wars over the right to print paper currency.

There was lots of pro-State trolling on that article.

Hyperinflation is the cause and not the effect. You buy gold to protect yourself from inflation and hyperinflation. However, in a SHTF scenario, food and lead may be more valuable than gold. Depending on how hard the crash is, gold helps you preserve your purchasing power.

Presumably, total chaos would only last for a few weeks. If you can hang on and you have gold and you don't get robbed, then you preserve most of your purchasing power.

You shouldn't try to time the market, buying high and selling low. It's better to gradually accumulate gold, minimizing your exposure to price volatility.

Gold also is useful to use as barter money.

In the late 19th century, the banksters made a ton of money off of adopting/abandoning the bimetallic standard. Before it was adopted, banksters bought a ton of silver. They sold all their silver just before it was abandoned. The bimetallic standard was a failure, because the gold:silver exchange rate was set artificially low. In a real free market bimetallic standard, the gold:silver ratio is allowed to float. Any contract must specify if payment is in gold or silver or other.

The State gold standards fail due to government manipulation, and not any other reason. A government gold standard fails due to the inevitable fraud, printing more gold-redeemable paper than available gold.

That article was a horrible bit of pro-State trolling. It sort of advocates buying gold, but is mostly nonsense.

I'm getting very good at glancing at a post, and telling if its useful or nonsense. I read a lot of blogs, and it really helps to be able to instantly evaluate if something's worth reading. That was pretty obviously nonsense.

The original Wizard of Oz was advocating for a bimetallic standard. The "ruby slippers" were originally silver slippers. The yellow brick road is an obvious reference to gold.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

Thank you for replying to my comment.

It is always interesting to have another viewpoint on an article I've (mostly) read.

I try to stock up on long lasting food at the supermarket, but over the past 6 months most of them have been consumed at a very slow rate. Actually some canned food at our supermarket was selling at dirt cheap rates.

If you live near open water or a river, investing in a water filter is a good idea (for the SHTF scenario). Water filters get rid of the pond life. I think a drop of bleach is needed to make sure all the water-borne viruses are killed off.

It all seems good here in my country at the moment, apart from the news items about Libor and unemployment. Do you think when things go bad, it will happen quickly or will it happen slowly?

When do you think the State will break down?

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

I've just read Hugo Salinas Price's article called "The Matrix of Power".

http://www.plata.com.mx/mplata/articulos/articlesFilt.asp?fiidarticulo=191

In it he says fiat paper money is part of the way the Elites retain control. He called the Welfare state "Socialism Lite" and says it depends on fiat paper money.

Anonymous Coward commented on Business Insider Trolls Against Gold.

It seems the Central Banks agree with FSK's thesis on the value of gold.

The article below points out that the creators of paper fiat money are selling their own product to buy gold!

http://www.bullionbullscanada.com/component/content/article/42-rokstories/24080-central-bank-gold-buying-increases-by-500


Very Uncool commented on Lesson For Daniel Tosh - How To Tell A Funny Rape Joke.
Evidence negating the case against Mr Assange was destroyed. See

http://radsoft.net/news/20101001,01.shtml

Read and weep.

http://radsoft.net/rants/20111121,00.shtml


Anonymous Coward commented on Colorado Mass Murder - James Eagan Holmes.
The Daily Mail has mentioned he was taking prescription drugs - in fact the same ones Heath Ledger took.

Sse

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2176377/Gunman-massacred-12-movie-premiere-used-drugs-killed-Batman-star-Heath-Ledger-messaged-web-lovers-ask--Will-visit-prison.html