Quotulatiousness

October 22, 2009

Jamie Holts, call your office

Filed under: Administrivia — Tags: — Nicholas @ 14:04

I’m getting comments posted on the last item at a rate of about one per minute (32 at time of writing). This would be great, except they’re all coming from the same IP address, and they’re looking more and more like spam.

They’re getting repetitive . . . and rather contradictory:

  • At 1:01pm — Thanks for posting the article, was certainly a great read!
  • At 1:02pm — I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
  • At 1:03pm — I like your site and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links.
  • At 1:04pm — I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work ๐Ÿ™‚
  • At 1:06pm — I’m just getting started with my new blog. Would you want to exchange links on our blog-rolls?
  • At 1:12pm — Can you tell me who did your layout? I’ve been looking for one kind of like yours. Thank you.
  • At 1:14pm — Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
  • At 1:20pm — I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
  • At 1:26pm — I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
    Very interesting posts and well written.
    I will put your site on my blogroll.
    ๐Ÿ™‚
  • At 1:27pm — I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work.
  • At 1:30pm — A friend of mine just emailed me one of your articles from a while back. I read that one a few more. Really enjoy your blog. Thanks

And so on . . .

I’m just letting them accumulate in the spam filter for the moment, but on the off-chance that there really is a “Jamie Holts” . . . you might want to check your machine.

Wage controls for high earners

Filed under: Economics, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:44

As if the government hadn’t inserted itself into too many things already, they’re now retroactively deciding that some corporate executives need a pay cut:

The Obama administration plans to order companies that have received exceptionally large amounts of bailout money from the government to slash compensation for their highest-paid executives by about half on average, according to people familiar with the long-awaited decision.

The cuts will affect 25 of the most highly paid executives at each of five major financial companies and two automakers, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public. Cash salaries will be cut by about 90 percent compared with last year, they said.

Oh, this is going to go just great, because — of course — there’ll be no negative effects of this bold move, right? Nobody will make different decisions in future out of fear of the government second-guessing them after the fact and reversing or modifying the call.

Uncertainty is the worst enemy of a free economy: you have to have some confidence in the stability of the legal structure in which you have to work in order to make rational long-term business decisions. As I wrote back in March,

The economic picture is unsettled, which sharply reduces the dependability of long-term and even short-term forecasting. Businesses depend on forecasting to make investments, create jobs, increase or decrease production, and pretty much every other part of their operations. Uncertainty is normal, but high levels of uncertainty act to depress all economic activity . . . and the US government playing kingmaker with the heads of major corporations is a hell of way to create more uncertainty.

The specific merits of the Richard Wagoner dismissal are unimportant compared to the extra measure of uncertainty injected into the economy as a whole. If President Obama and his team can dismiss Wagoner, why not the heads of any bank accepting government funding? Why not other corporate officers (corporate directors have already been ousted at government whim)? At what level does the government’s self-created new power stop?

The direction the US federal government has set will do nothing to settle economic worries, and much to increase them. The clear belief on the part of the administration is that they are better able to pick the winners and losers of economic activity of which most of them have no practical experience. That is a modern definition of hubris.

Brain farts like this latest one just introduce huge amounts of uncertainty into the long-term plans of every company. This is no way to encourage recovery.

As several people have noted, if Barack Obama’s administration was determined to destroy the US economy . . . what would they have done differently?

It’s not a clever satire

Filed under: Liberty, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:58

John Dvorak thought that this was “meant to be satire or commentary (or is it?) on where London is heading with itโ€™s multiple cameras on every street and where the former East Germany was. And were we could eventually go if we arenโ€™t vigilant.” I don’t think so:

The link provided goes to the LAPD website. Creepy.

Soon, they’ll demand a fee for thinking about the songs

Filed under: Britain, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:44

Although this particular case appears to have ended correctly — with an apology from the heavy-handed enforcer — it does still illustrate just how far the copyright police are willing to go:

A shop assistant who was told she could not sing while she stacked shelves without a performance licence has been given an apology.

Sandra Burt, 56, who works at A&T Food store in Clackmannanshire, was warned she could be fined for her singing by the Performing Right Society (PRS).

However the organisation that collects royalties on behalf of the music industry has now reversed its stance.

They have sent Mrs Burt a bouquet of flowers and letter of apology.

Mrs Burt, who describes herself as a Rolling Stones fan, said that despite the initial warning from the PRS, she had been unable to stop herself singing at work.

Instant reactions to Windows 7

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:31

The Register polled their readers about their out-of-the-box experiences with the new Microsoft operating system:

Microsoft takes the wraps off Windows 7 tonight, but thanks to the UK’s looming postal strike Reg readers have been playing with the final, shrink-wrapped product for days.

So before you go out and spend money on the new OS and/or a new PC, you might be interested in our what ad hoc panel of real readers has to say.

First up is Gary, who says installation took a blisteringly fast 30 minutes “end-to-end from removal of shrink wrap and checking what was left in situ”. And what was left in situ? Everything, apparently.

Phil, a self-confessed Linux fan, was more restrained, but after upgrading Vista on a work laptop, declared: “I’m fairly impressed really.”

Installation was not as quick for him as Gary, taking over three hours. Phil doesn’t mention any problems with the shrinkwrap, so we presume it was the installation process itself that slowed things up.

Not quite the adoration Microsoft’s marketing department would have liked, but Register readers are a tough crowd . . . this is high praise from them.

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