Random Thoughts

Does cost always correlate with quality? That would obviously depends on the commodity in question. People have researched this topic as it pertains to water(bottled vs. tap, bottled vs. bottled) , wine , and vodka . Blind tastings for water, vodka and wine have largely concluded that the average person can't detect the difference between most cheap and expensive brands. The answer to whether expensive wine, vodka, and bottled water are really better has been an emphatic no. But, the mere thought of drinking something expensive elicits a better sense of enjoyment. Of course, connoisseurs have developed a more refined taste for what is good and what is not. But for the average Joe, expensive=better is simply a placebo effect. I am a heavy coffee drinker and I have evaluated whether my preference for certain Starbucks blends over generic brands (Folgers, Maxwell House ...) was real or an object of my imagination. It turns out it is real. I can tell apart generic brands from ...

I had previously written about blocking ads using my wireless router's web filter as a way of saving network bandwidth . Apparently Firefox users like myself can block ads much more conveniently using the Flashblock and Adblock addons. Flashblock literally blocks all Macromedia Flash content and indicates the blocked content with a placeholder which may be clicked to view the Flash content. It is a little excessive, but I like it. Adblock blocks ad sources as instructed. I apologize to those that rely on online advertising revenues to put food on the table, but they should find solace in knowing that I don't respond to ads. Trust me, it is for the best.

Investing in the stock market is not just for people who have money but also for broke people like myself who want to shell out virtual dollars to make smart and profitable investments that gain them nothing more than the illusion of being a rich person. I recently decided to invest $50,000 of my own money in the stock market using Google Finance . It is very easy to set up an investment portfolio if you have an account with Google. One can find lots of information about companies to invest in, track the stock over time, evaluate its performance in terms of some industry parameters and compare it with similar companies. Buying and selling stocks is effortless. I decided to invest about $50,000 in sectors that should grow and be profitable during this economic recession. Energy seemed like a good choice because of the price of oil. Whichever company could provide energy, preferably cheaply and efficiently would be worthy of my investment. Cost of energy has driven up transportatio...

My previous post on saving paper and ink/toner using the Aardvark Add-on on Firefox has inspired me to seek other topics on efficiency. This post advocates the client-side blocking of ads on the web as a way of being less wasteful with internet bandwidth. I feel slightly guilty about this because a lot of the free content on the internet is supported by ad revenues, and users blocking those ads might deny access to those revenues for the providers of the free content. However, if you are like me and you almost never pay attention to or click on any ads, then you are probably doing no damage. How do I know what to block? I looked through my Firefox cookies and did a search for 'ad'. I would then selectively block those domains. You can block the ad servers locally on your computer, for example suing 'iptables' in Linux or Network Magic in Windows, or for your whole network through whatever interface you have. In my case, the easiest thing was to configure my...

I am sure you are tired of printing garbage like ads and someone else's colorful artwork while all you wanted was have a hard-copy of some clean text and graphics. If you are a Mozilla Firefox user, there is a solution that can save you lot of paper and ink/toner. It is a Firefox add-on called Aardvark , and it allows you to selectively remove sections of a web page before sending it to a printer. Here is a little synopsis : Powerful and user-friendly utility for selecting elements and doing various actions on them. It can be used for cleaning up a page prior to printing it (by removing and isolating elements), for making the page more readable, and (most appreciated by web developers), for analyzing the structure of a page. To use Aardvark , just right-click on the page and select from the popup menu. As you move the mouse over the page, you will see a red rectangle around the current block element, along with a label showing its type, and if they exist, its id, class, and styl...

Not too many stories resonate with me as much as the plight of legitimate asylum seekers whose desperate plea to find refuge in the US is ultimately decided by the questionable preference, judgment and mood of a single asylum officer (with some oversight from a regional asylum director) on one fateful day. That decision, according to numerous credible and through studies, depends largely on the location of the regional asylum center, the legal representation of the the applicant, the gender of the asylum officer just as much as the merit of the asylum case, while in fact the legitimacy of the asylum case should be the only relevant factor. This phenomenon has become so real that researchers at the Georgetown University law school have dubbed it the Refugee Roulette . Why am I so sensitive about this subject? My most devastating tragedy of late has been the denial of my legitimate and honest application for political asylum at the Chicago Asylum Office. When I applied believing the ...

I never had much appreciation for The New York Times in the past because I didn't subscribe to their online or printed material. Now that they are providing all their content online for free , I can't say enough about how much I love and respect their work. Their articles are well-written; their content is presented in a clean format without too many ads; their servers work smoothly. The New York Times embodies journalism and presentation at its finest. I particularly enjoy their op-ed material from full-time columnists like Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman, as well as regulars like economst/journalists like Steve/Stephen Levitt/Dubner, and Austan Goolsbee. My discovery and appreciation for The New York Times is still in its infancy, but it will definitely grow as I stuff myself with all their free and rich content.

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....

The detest for Bill Gates amongst elite IT workers and computer scientists in the US is quite immense and people who frequent the tech hot spots like Slashdot and Arstechnica on the Internet know of it all too well. For a real pioneer who can be credited for making the computer an integral part of our lives, such disdain is almost seems unjustified. For someone who has been one of the most magnanimous philanthropist in recent memory, his reputation as a greedy and monopolistic corporate figure is somewhat surprising. Why would people in the US dislike Bill Gates who is supposedly the person most Chinese students aspire to become ahead of Newton, Einstein ...? Why is his reputation stateside is much less glamorous? Why is he such a polarizing character? There are many reasons, including a recent realization I have come to in regards to his insistence on immigration reform to open the US up for more skilled labor from overseas. The Good: He pioneered personal computing th...

I always interesting pieces I never get to share to avoid creating a million little posts about non-original material. So, I will instead contain them all in this one post. Browser market Shares - Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads "Firefox hit another milestone this past Friday, when it passed the 400 million download mark . From its launch in 2004 it took one year to reach 100 million downloads, hitting 200 million downloads just one year later. According to figures released by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent." Smarter-than-Human Intelligence & The Singularity Summit "Brilliant technologists like Ray Kurzweil and Rodney Brooks are gathering in San Francisco for The Singularity Summit . The Singularity re...

Slashdot led me to an interesting article from which I wanted to share a few gems. The original article can be found at http://www.cio.com/article/135700/Seven_Wonders_of_the_IT_World/ Biggest Paradigm Change in Enterprise Software: Linux kernel Created by: Linus Torvalds, in 1991, helping open-source developers collectively craft a viable alternative to Microsoft operating systems. The Linux kernel contains 8.2 million lines of code, with approximately 86 lines added every hour Number of developers: Total since 1991 is unknown; 3,200 developers for the kernel as of release 2.6.22. New releases: Every 2.6 months.* Quick change artists: 2.89 changes made to the kernel every hour. Lines of code: 8.2 million and growing (about 10 percent per year). Amount of code added every hour: 85.63 lines. Revenue diverted from Microsoft: Perhaps only Mr. Gates knows. *Unless otherwise marked, statistics reflect Linux kernel releases of the past 2.5 years (version 2.6.11 through 2.6.21). Wor...

Well, I had to take care of some business in Chicago recently and I thought I would make a trip out of this opportunity by visiting my very good friends in the area, namely Jay in Chicago, Will in Milwaukee and "the Fekade's" in Minneapolis. The trip started with an 9-hr drive to Milwaukee when I listened to Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and learned the value of audiobooks, not only in an educational sense but in battling my costly tendency to speed [and get ticketed] during long trips. Milwaukee:: Once in Milwaukee, I settled in the beautiful Whitefish Bay suburb where Will and his family live. Within an hour, I decided to ride Will's bike a mile or two from his house where I was at the edge of a hill overlooking Lake Michigan. For someone who is not fond of the beach and all the heat, burning and nudity that comes with it, there was nothing better than feeling a cool breeze and serenity of the lake. The next day, we went to a Mexican festival and love...

I have not been a fan of Dell as of late and here is why. I have access to a Dell printer(Dell 944 All-in-One printer/scanner/copier) that came in for cheap bundled with a Dell laptop. The printer is basically made by Lexmark, but sold though Dell with minor modifications and a Dell label. This presents two problems: As a Linux user, I like printers for which Linux drivers exist, either through Dell or another party. The irritating thing about these Dell printers is that Dell only provides Windows drivers while Lexmark, the proxy maker of the printer, usually provides at least Windows and Mac drivers and often tries to provide kits for the development of Linux drivers. If one wanted to look for a Lexmark analog of a Dell printers, it is virtually impossible to do because that information does not seem to be readily available. Another way Dell makes it difficult for all non-Dell users and products is in the cartridge business. The ink cartridge can only bought from Dell and no ot...