NCAA: more mistakes in the USC / Reggie Bush case.

Can this get any more embarrassing for the NCAA COI and their appeals board?

Dennis Dodd from CBS Sports online has a concise review of the most recent mistake the NCAA has made.  Now, you'd think that having broken all previous records of time to review a case and review an appeals, they'd have crossed their T's and dotted their I's?

"We've got 1) an administrative error by the NCAA; 2) questionable interpretations by the Legislative Review and Interpretations Committee and 3) a slammed-door in USC's face changed to "generally speaking.""

These so-called lawyers at the NCAA COI must be second-rate lawyers; how in the world do all these COI mistakes keep piling up in the Reggie Bush case?

What's the NCAA to do, now? Death penalty to Ohio State?

Jim Tressel resigned on Memorial Day; it may be forever known as Ohio State's Memorial.  Turns out, it was THIS SPORTS ILLUSTRATED STORY that may have caused the hurried meeting and sudden resignation of Tressel.  It's very bad news for Ohio State: from the start, Tressel may have been instrumental in hooking up players and boosters, and not just a handful.

"Ohio State players have been trading memorabilia --­ including items bearing Tressel's signature -- since at least the coach's second season, according to multiple ­sources. The number of players ­involved is also much higher than what has previously been disclosed."

When you get through with reading it, you have only two questions to ask:

After the NCAA said that USC should have been keeping a close eye on its high profile players, how will the NCAA react to an exploding scandal at Ohio State, where four of the Buckeyes' best players currently on their roster were deeply involved in getting booster benefits...Death Penalty?

Why didn't the 400+ violations over the last decade, tip off the NCAA that maybe something wasn't quite right, even if Ohio State had a large compliance office?  After all, the NCAA just recently commented on its allegation against Boise State, saying, "it is alleged that the scope and nature of the violations set forth in this inquiry demonstrate that the institution lacked institutional control."

And ESPN is reporting that the NCAA is opening up a separate inquiry just on Terrelle Pryor.

Ai Wei Wei -- photos on display in Switzerland -- puts a smile on your face.

Well, at least it did for me; probably not for Chinese or French authorities.

"study of perspective – tiananmen", 1998

"study of perspective - the eiffel tower", 1997

via DesignBoom

Glaciers have crevasses, volcanoes have...

ground cracks...fall in, you might get roasted.

Pu'u 'O'o crater - Kilauea on Hawai'i, lava bed filling up.

This is what the Pu'u 'O'o crater looks like in the day:

via USGS

via USGS

This is what it looks like, through thermal imaging, over a span of two months.  It's growing...maybe forming a mountain, eh?

via Star Advertiser, USGS

Official PAC-12 Championship logo...to be picked by fans.

PAC-12 is letting fans pick the logo that will be used for the inaugural PAC-12 Championship in December.  You can make your selection HERE.  But HURRY -- polls close 5:00 pm Pacific Time,  Monday, May 30th.  You know you like #3.  You know you like #3.  You know you...

Microsoft's extortion game.

I don't think there's been enough press made of CPTN Holdings, and how close Microsoft was, at obtaining a large portion of Novell's IP last month. Had it not been for regulators in Europe, who forced Microsoft to give up their share of the IP, from CPTN's buyout of Novell's IP, the tech environment may have been further distorted by a group of tech oligarchs.

Now, we find out that Microsoft has been extorting $5 from HTC for every Android handset they sell.  Word is, they're currently pursuing even higher extortion monies from other manufacturers.  Which to me, is proof that Ballmer's WP7 can't compete head to head, so he has to rely on his cadre of lawyers to find alternative means of revenue.  All these "new" features that are coming to WP7 via Mango...a lot of it was stuff that Android already has.

This is symptomatic of the distorted intellectual property system in Europe and the US: the more mature a company gets, the more it ends up relying on its patent portfolio that has built up over the years, forcing newer companies (that tend to move much faster and with intrepid determination in comparison to their elderly brethren) to pay its rent, just to exist.

Technological innovation is predicated on first paying the rent.

Sound familiar?  Before you can sell an orange, you have to pay me so that nothing bad happens to your store, my friend!

I wonder if PIMCO's Bill Gross is pissed?

3.07%  -- 10 year US Treasury yield as of yesterday.

Start saving those emails and phone call records...we'll want to know if Bill Gross or anyone at PIMCO's been talking to GOP members about allowing the US to default in August, which would naturally lead to a fast rise in the yield, and provide a handsome return for any hedge bets.

So far, the bond market is ignoring him, and paying more attention to Europe's mess.  Clearly a market is anticipating a Greek default, and a spreading of problems throughout Europe.

Greece 10 year bond rate

Ireland 10 year bond rate

Portugal 10 year bond rate

Why not vote "yes" for a clean bill to raise the debt limit?

Republicans plan to allow a vote next week on raising the debt ceiling without conditions, as a way to pin Democrats to a vote.

I don't get it.

Nothing says bipartisanship, than voting to get this obstacle out of the way, then actually trying to tackle the deficit and federal debt, rather than tying the fate of America's economy to partisan politics, don't you think?  What do liberal Democrats have to lose by voting to raise the debt ceiling without political conditions; wouldn't conservative politicians want it the same way if Democrats were in charge?

If anything, Democrats will be able to pin Republicans on the vote, showing that Republicans have changed little since the Kathy Hochul win in a conservative district in New York.  Their votes would indicate that Republicans remain fixated on following the same path with the same Tea Party dogma that led them to vote for Paul Ryan's budget plan that gave the rich a nice 33% cut in their tax rates, while cutting spending on seniors.

So if Republicans really want to play politics with the federal debt ceiling, let it be on their watch, and let their votes be counted, I say!

What? NCAA denies USC's appeal?

First off, I expected this to happen, because after all, they denied Todd McNair's appeal, and he was central to the NCAA COI's case against USC's lack of institutional control.  You know, sorta like how the NCAA is going to crush Ohio State from Jim Tressel's lying to the NCAA and for allowing knowledge of student misconduct to go unreported and unpunished...practically the same situation.  Well, I guess anything is possible with the NCAA, because they've stated as a matter of fact, that no two cases are alike, thus throwing out the history of judicial precedence and its role in the past 2500 years of justice, dating back to the Romans.

Where was I?  Oh...so anyway, USCFootball.com is reporting that its sources have learned that USC's appeal was denied by the NCAA.

The NCAA removed any possibility for overturning any decision, specifically by removing the ability to compare past cases.  Once they did that, and once they limited the scope of an appeal, it was much like a death penalty case in federal courts...ain't gonna happen unless new evidence completely exonerates the convicted.

But look at it this way: USC's got 8 verbal commits for 2012, and six of them are 4-stars, another is a JC-transfer, and the last is an unranked kid at fullback.  Nothing would counter the NCAA more, than to see USC beat Oregon and end up with a perfect (or near-perfect) record, forcing the second and third best teams in the PAC-12 to play for the PAC-12 championship in December, then having a top-10 class despite being limited to 75 total scholarships and 15 signed recruits for 2012's class.

So Trojan fans, nothing would be sweeter, than for Barkley, Woods, McDonald and Company to make a huge statement contrary to the NCAA's intent to punish USC, and beat Oregon and the rest of the PAC-12...give those folks at the NCAA COI strokes from the blood vessels popping in their heads from seeing USC dominate even under severe sanctions!

Go Trojans!

With a few more months like this, Paul Ryan will be forgotten man.

Paul Ryan and Republican leaders have been running around like crazy, trying to prevent the political fallout from his Medicare overhaul proposal that was included in the official GOP budget that was passed by House Republicans.

As more economists come out criticizing both the Paul Ryan plan and the Medicare overhaul, the ranks of Republicans have begun to split as the politics takes its toll.  Heck, if the Economist takes a whole editorial to criticize Paul Ryan's plan, you know shit just got real.

Peter Orzag, the departed CBO chief, has written up an analysis for Bloomberg, examining WHY the GOP proposal failed to contain costs.

While the government's share shrinks, beneficiaries will see their personal out of pocket costs double, on a dollar-basis.  Straight out of the CBO's analysis based on Paul Ryan's request:

"By 2030, the beneficiary’s (65 year old retiree) spending would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the (Paul Ryan) proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario (no change)."

Newt Gingrich - for just a brief moment - offered his candid assessment on the Paul Ryan plan:

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

Mitch McConnell, senate minority leader has said that he won't force Republican senators to vote for Paul Ryan's plan.

Senator Scott Brown, the first guy elected into office by Tea Party support, has changed his mind and has announced that he will vote against the Paul Ryan plan, because of the higher costs seniors will bear.

Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, moderate Republicans from Maine, have announced that they too, will vote no on Paul Ryan's plan.  Snowe responded, "I have deep and abiding concerns about the approach on Medicare, which is essentially to privatize it."

Democrat Kathy Hochul ended up winning a seat vacated by humiliated Republican Representative Chris Lee, from NY's 26th district, a conservative district, going from a 31% polling rate on April 27, to winning with 47% of the vote on Tuesday.

Attention folks: The Tea Party is officially on its way out the door.

Next up: the debt ceiling.

Amazon Android tablet?

Rumors only, but the rumors are sounding really good: quad core, switchable b/w e-ink and LCD, 7 and 10 inch versions...but the switchable screen might not be available until 2012/2013.

Still, an Android tablet from Amazon? Probably a winner.

Conservative state-level leadership and global warming.

Reading this NYT article on Chicago's 50-year preparation for the effects of global warming, it seems that some Conservatives are leading two lives...the populist rhetorical one, and the good governance one:

Melissa Stults, the climate director for ICLEI USA, an association of local governments, said that many of the administrations she was dealing with were following a strategy of “discreetly integrating preparedness into traditional planning efforts.”

They don't really have much of a choice: insurers are forcing them to adapt to a changing planet, or absorb their own natural disaster losses on their own.  For instance:

As the region warms, Chicago is expecting more frequent and extreme storms. In the last three years, the city has had two intense storms classified as 100-year events. 

Chicago has already changed from one growing zone to another in the last 30 years, and it expects to change several times again by 2070.

Five years ago, the Arbor Day Foundation revised its hardiness zones.  In just 16 years, there were major changes across the US (noted below).  Now, on any given day it may be warmer or cooler, or seasons may seem warmer or cooler; however, measured over long periods of years, the measured trend shows shorter Winters and greater frequency of extreme weather events.

Android at Maker Faire...kawaii!

via Engadget

Lady Gaga uses Chrome?

We definitely know she uses Youtube, but it looks like she uses Chrome, too.

The obligatory dog photos.

It was nice last weekend, but too nice...ended up with bad allergies from playing outside with the dog on Friday and Saturday.  The grass was perfectly tall and cushioning to cool down from running around fetching the ball.

High river levels on the Willamette.

Was walking last night along the waterfront, and noticed the water was a good 6 feet higher than normal.  Turns out, combined melting snow and rains from the other week are combining to increase flows, which incidentally is resulting in the bridge spans being raised more often than normal.  It's been dry the past three days, so it's a little strange.

River just a foot below the concrete walkway, 200 yards away from Union Station.

These buildings to the left got flooded in 1996.  It's not going to get that high.

Gartner says Android rules the world: Q1-2011

Looking closely at the numbers, Symbian was on more units sold in Q1-2011, than on Q1-2010, but that still resulted in Symbian shrinking dramatically in market share over the year, while Android exploded globally.

Looking even closer, there was one fella that actually SHRANK number of units SOLD from Q1-2010 to Q1-2011...Microsoft.  Units sold shrank 1.0%, but its market share shrank by 47.1%, as the total market of smart phones increased 84.9%.

[excerpt from Gartner's release below]

Table 2

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q11 (Thousands of Units)

Company	1Q11  Units	1Q11 Market Share (%)	1Q10  Units	1Q10 Market Share (%)
Android	36,267.8	36.0	5,226.6	9.6
Symbian	27,598.5	27.4	24,067.7	44.2
iOS	16,883.2	16.8	8,359.7	15.3
RIM	13,004.0	12.9	10,752.5	19.7
Microsoft	3,658.7	3.6	3,696.2	6.8
Other OS	3,357.2	3.3	2,402.9	4.4
Total	100,769.3	100.0	54,505.5	100.0

Source: Gartner (May 2011)

Uhm...did someone in Redmond hit the panic button yet?

Image from Flickr user star5112 - Creative Commons

Michaels stores was just the beginning.

Krebsonsecurity reports that POS skimmers are readily available for many models, including the most popular Verifone units:

"Many devices and services are sold on the criminal underground to facilitate the surprisingly common fraud."

Still feel safe using debit cards over credit cards?

Yes you can! Get an official "Made in the USA" T-shirt, that is.

Donate $25 and get a t-shirt to irritate birthers and Donald Trump...the guy whose own products are made in China.

Or donate $15 and get yourself a mug to irritate the birthers in your office.

Google Phone Gallery...how to find the Android phone you want.

Don't know which Android phone you want?  Google Phone Gallery's got Android phones / devices from all around the world, gathered into one spot.  It allows you to filter by nation, by provider or manufacturer, then compare them side by side.  Very useful as the market is flooded with all sorts of Android phones.

Treasuries continue to drop yields...

How odd is that?  Even with the acknowledgment that the US has officially hit its debt limit, 10-year US Treasuries hit 3.11% yield today (5/17/2011), down 32 basis points from the Friday before (4/15/2011) the S&P issued its warning, and down 12 basis points since Pimco announced additional bets against US debt (5/10/2011), with expectations of high inflation.

So why is this?  Probably because confidence runs high that the US will continue to pay interest on bonds to avoid a true default, forcing the US government to cut spending elsewhere, including a partial shutdown or immediate furlough Mondays and Fridays.  Or at least, if doubt begins to creep in, the US Treasury can make an explicit statement in support of continued interest payments.

Which explains why John Boehner is willing to make intractable requirements that Democrats agree to cuts equal to or more than any debt ceiling increase, dollar for dollar.  He really wants the US to hit its absolute spending limits to enable their minority position (just majority hold of the House) of fixed spending limits to hit under Democrats, to exact a calculated political repercussion for the 2012 election.  Or I should say, I doubt Republicans actually believe public spending is crowding out private, because interest rates and inflation are low and median wages remain flat, disproving their rhetoric.

I mean really, do Republicans actually believe in their grand theory of economic relativity, that cutting government spending will cure all ills, even if some of those symptoms are contraindications?

"In hindsight, Nokia was the wrong partner to have picked."

Paul Otellini made the remark about Nokia, after predicting that Intel was going to have its CPUs inside smartphones early next year.  Chalk it up to sour grapes perhaps, but Nokia left their partnership - MeeGo - that was announced just last year in February, only to be killed off by Nokia exactly a year later.

It's no wonder then, last month Intel's subsidiary Wind River announced it was working on developing software for Android, and days later, Intel announced it was working on bringing x86 architecture to Honeycomb.

Still getting FedEx trojan horse spam?

I had to laugh at this one...

"May 2011
FedEx www.fedex.com
Federal Express
tracking numbers
# 4050281
The parcel was sent your home adress.
And it will arrive within 5 buisness days.
More information and the parcel tracking number are attached in document below.
Thank you
Federal Express Canada Ltd. and FedEx. All rights reserved.© 1995-2011 FedEx"

Proof that spammers / malware writers cannot spell nor use proper English grammar.  Worse, FedEx doesn't send out tracking numbers in this method, and the silly spam malware lists an improperly formed tracking number anyway.  LOL!

Some considerations for Republicans.

It's been an oft-repeated belief that government spending is crowding out private spending.  It's also a well-regarded opinion in conservative circles that the US Government must stay within its budget.

So don't even bother with trying to extract spending cut concessions from Democrats; just push your representative and senator to keep the debt ceiling in place!

You see, by keeping the debt ceiling in place, it forces the US to automatically live within its means and make the same 30% cuts in spending that your Tea Party friends in Congress had been pushing.  If you believe that private spending is being crowded out by public spending, then a 30% cut should result in a huge jobs gain in the private sector, right?

Don't let your Republican politician weasel his or her way out of election promises to see those steep cuts through: put pressure on your representatives at local meet and greets!  Push them to cut that upper income tax bracket down to an unheard of 25% top rate that was included in the Paul Ryan plan, while at the same time cutting spending.  But most of all, push them to do nothing to compromise with Democrats to move the debt ceiling.

But remember this: If Republicans stand pat, but the economy crumbles and shit hits the fan globally, you have a steep price to pay.  The cost of failure, is to admit you were wrong and stop blaming others.

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Service having some issues.

UK's Register has a lengthy article on the travails of Microsoft's attempts to pay Google Apps customers to switch to BPOS only to have the service degrade and altogether go offline multiple times, cutting people off from their email communication and creating huge backlogs lasting up to 9 hours.  Complaints have been rolling in.

But honestly, it's not like Google's Gmail or Yahoo's Mail have been perfect.  Just like Google refunded paying users for outages, Microsoft has previously provided credit for its BPOS paying customers.  Although, after going through some other sites, it seems like a lot of clients have long had lingering issues, not just a couple problems like some have had with Google Apps.

Note however, this Summer (a month from now) Google has promised to return Google Docs / Apps to offline accessible, which would be a huge step in making those Chrome notebooks 100% useful, and productivity moving forward even when access to the cloud is cut off (by lack of signal / connection or a cloud disruption).

Radical Islamists love their porn?

According to Reuters, a big stash of porn was found in the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan.  It also said that, apparently, this is not unique...porn has been found at other Islamic hideouts.

Which begs the question: Were they found on *hard* drives or *floppy*?

Android + Arduino.

Embracing the openess of the hacker community...a good thing.  And that's just a nascent exploration.

No thanks to blogger.

No thanks to blogger.  Some posts from this week have disappeared entirely.  So much for their attempts at restoring data.  :P

EDIT 5/13/11 4:10 pm PDT: WHEW!  They restored all the missing posts. :D  Good to know they didn't lose anything.  Feeling much better about the cloud.

Facebook hired PR firm to smear Google.

Very few news outlets / blogs took the bait, but yesterday Gawker bit the story from Business Insider which in turn was gullible enough to eat up the story from this PR firm.

The story seemed odd enough: Google's Gmail was spying on your contacts trolling for external data for social media relationships.  Of course, it was a bit of a stretch that Gmail was somehow violating privacy issues -- after all, anyone with Gmail knows that it will ask you if you want to connect with different people on your contact list.  Not exactly big news, or new news, or news.

Talk about egg on face.  Turns out Facebook had hired a PR firm to try to manufacture a story with excessive claims on what was going on, and was caught by Dan Lyons at The Daily Beast.

Not only was this PR firm trying to place a fake story with mainstream journalists, but it was pushing them to use this as a headline: "LESS THAN ONE MONTH AFTER FTC PRIVACY VIOLATION SETTLEMENT, GOOGLE QUIETLY LAUNCHES SWEEPING VIOLATION OF USER PRIVACY."*

It also alleges that, "Google Social Circles does not ask “permission” from individuals who will have their profiles, connections and other personal data shared in the new network."*

None of it was true, however.  Gmail asks if you want to connect to your contacts into your Social Circle.  And as a matter of fact, it only finds information that is publicly available on the internet.  If you close your social media off, it won't be found.

Looks like the PR firm is going to need its own PR firm...and maybe legal representation.

* - see this email dump.


UPDATE 5/12/11 12:35 PDT: Well that was fast: the PR firm quit their relationship with Facebook, suggesting that it was against their own policy to try to keep their client a secret, and Facebook is backpedaling on its reasoning for its actions.

Felix Salmon points out what happens when Skype + Microsoft.net join together...

In 2011, Sky.net was turned on; in 2012, Sky.net became self-aware; on December 21, 2012, the world ended.

via Felix Salmon

Why you should stop using your debit card.

One word: Michaels.

USC Trojans uniforms for UCLA game...if you're going black...

Why go just part of the way?

Why not go ALL THE WAY?

My version of the UCLA game uniforms.

Chrome OS: the Chromebook is coming June 15th.

Are you ready for the cloud?  Google announced a $20/month subscription model (hardware / software updates) for students, and laptops for purchase starting at $349.  Amazon's got a Chromebook store with the various models / configurations set up, but no prices.

What is Chromebook?  It's a low-powered, cloud-connected device that runs its software applications from the cloud. In other words, a client terminal, though not nearly as dumb, since it does have some local storage and built-in software (the OS).

It just could be the perfect product for your aging parents that are wary of computers, or kids that seem to act as magnets for malware, as Chrome (extremely similar to the Chrome browser) has a sandbox making it vastly more difficult than any other OS to break in and steal data.  Drawbacks to the cloud model: data can be, and often is, stolen online from less than secure internet services / sites.  But then again, if you're already browsing and buying off the internet, the threat is no less or more than a cloud-based client.

More on that Android ADK for Arduino.

via Engadget.  Although, I would wait for bluetooth support first.

Android eating an Apple at Google I/0 2011.

From Cnet:

Google IO 2011 - a mother lode of news.

Engadget's capturing the full Google IO announcements - and there are TONS - but for me, the most intriguing is that Android now has a development kit for.....Arduino!

Why the fuss?  Because it will be the lynch pin that triggers a widespread creation of accessories that are compatible specifically created for Android users, from big companies to self-stylized hackers.  Whatever subject you're majoring in or graduated with, forget it...computer science and industrial engineering is where it's at.

In addition, the other Google announcements according to Engadget:

• Android @ Home -- Android in devices throughout your home;
• Guaranteed timely Android updates with OEM partners;
• Android Market now has movie rentals, and you can rent from Youtube as well;
• Android 3.1 update for Xoom starting today;
• Next Android version is called Ice Cream Sandwich and will integrate tablets and phones, out in Q4;
• Google TV will be Android 3.1 with Android Market access;
• Android is growing, not slowing, now with 400K daily global activations;
• Google Music allows streaming of your music collection stored in the cloud.

Tracking the US GDP, Q1-2011.

It is still growing, but it has been sluggish. Can't help but notice how the stimulus - most of which was used in 2009 - really does show up in total GDP, and the slacking off of GDP growth comes as the federal stimulus program ended.

You have to watch "Exit Through The Gift Shop".

It is hilarious!  It's about street art and how frenchman Thierry Guetta turned from being an obsessed guy with a camera, to being obsessed over street art and his own aspirations of creating art.  But in the end, the joke is on the artists whose raison d'etre is turned on its head as they observe Thierry replace critical thinking with marketing, most epically demonstrated by his self-fabricated street name: Mr. Brainwash / MBW.

More central (for me) is that it's Banksy's first film - a documentary - that covers Invader and Shepherd Fairey and Banksy.  There's even a snippet of Swoon.  But it's about Banksy, really, and Banksy is one of the best modern artists out there -- specifically installations.  It just so happens his canvas is the whole world, not some room.

The last lines from Banksy sums it all up:

"I used to always encourage everyone I met to make art; I used to think everyone should do it....I don't really do that so much anymore."

And once you get through the whole film (because of the sequence of events within the movie), the title makes perfect sense.

Looks like the US housing crisis is growing as expected.

Prices continue to drop, and according to Zillow (via Bloomberg), 28% of American homeowners are now underwater -- that is, they owe more than their homes are worth. What's more, Zillow says that 85% of Las Vegas properties were underwater.

Which of course only means that when the second wave of mortgage resets hits its peak in Fall of this year, people will not qualify for refinancing, mortgages will be dropped, banks will be under duress, mortgage insurers will be tested, and of course prices will drop.

I wonder if this will be as volatile of a year as 2008 was?

On a slightly different note, the federal reserve board has this research paper on the constraints of people carrying ARMs, with a table showing different characteristics between people with an ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) and those with FRMs (fixed rate mortgages):

Table 3. Homeowner Other Characteristics, by mortgage type

Survey of Consumer Finances	ARM	Non-ARM
Credit card utilization (percent)	41%	31%**
Always pay off credit card (percent)	44%	49%***
Sometimes pay off credit card (percent)	23%	23%
Hardly ever pay off credit card (percent)	32%	28%**
Debt is okay (percent)	68%	67%
Debt is okay - vacation (percent)	17%	16%
Debt is okay - loss of income (percent)	50%	45%***
Debt is okay - luxuries (percent)	8%	7%
Debt is okay - purchase a car (percent)	87%	88%
Debt is okay - education (percent)	89%	88%
Financial planning period < 1 year (percent)	28%	24%**
Turned down for credit (percent)	14%	12%**
N	1640	8187

***Significantly different at the 1 percent or better confidence level
**Significantly different at the 5 percent confidence level

*Significantly different at the 10 percent confidence level

I think it's striking to see that truly, those who either opt for or have no choice but to go with ARMs, over-utilize their credit cards, tend not to pay them off in full, each month, and lean on credit cards when they lose their jobs, more than FRM holders.  Which obviously lends itself to the central point of the FRB's paper, that ARM holders are constrained.

Can't really do a whole lot about it, I think, because America is a society that rewards high risk takers, despite all the problems of economic instability through asset bubbles.  After all, we still have Donald Trump on TV and in the news, able to sucker investors left and right, having now gone through two partial bankruptcies.

Android platform continues to grow dominant position in the US.

This via ComScore - as we've already known from other metrics - Android has become the dominant mobile OS in the United States.  Note that, after a full quarter of sales of WP7, Microsoft's market share in the US continues to slide; that -0.9 percentage point change represents a 10.7% decline over just one quarter.  With each passing month, WP7 looks a lot like Palm's WebOS' introduction, and subsequent decline.

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Mar. 2011 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Dec. 2010 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Dec-10	Mar-11	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	28.7%	34.7%	6.0
RIM	31.6%	27.1%	-4.5
Apple	25.0%	25.5%	0.5
Microsoft	8.4%	7.5%	-0.9
Palm	3.7%	2.8%	-0.9

Apple is the anti-Microsoft crowd; a good deal of people I see with iPhones also have Apple computers, which means that they're less likely to switch from the iPhone to WP7 because of their distaste for Microsoft.  Google is gaining that sort of fanatical fan base - in part because of its integration of mobile products with Android - that Apple has.  How much time does Microsoft have, to make a compelling case to non-smartphone users to adopt the WP7 platform?

Sorry, no March 2010 data publicly available from ComScore.

Malware via javascript in Google image searches.

I'd noticed this previously, some images in a Google image search, if you clicked through, would deliver you to a site that would try to install malware on your computer (thank goodness for AVG blocking).  Today, Brian Krebs covers this issue, and describes how Firefox has an extension that adds a red frame around images (compromised sites) that are linked to malware.

Since I use Chrome and there was no such extension - yet - for Chrome, I decided it was time to block all javascript.  Sounds draconian, but Chrome makes it easy enough to enable javascript on sites, by clicking on the icon that comes up on each site, creating an exception within Chrome (then hitting the reload button to refresh the page coding).  Hint: if a website does not look right, it's because you need to enable javascript.

I also do something similar with 3rd party cookies and primary cookies.  I've disabled all third-party cookies in Chrome, but I've also added a Chrome extension, Vanilla Cookie Manager, which allows me to selectively block first-party (primary) cookies, as a means to explore websites I have no idea whether or not they're legit, without handing them the opportunity to track my actions and dropping accessible code into my computer.

Android grabs 35% of Q1-CY2011 units.

Same Canalys report, but I had to throw in an image just for the fun of it.

Technological details of the raid on Bin Laden compound.

ABC News reports that the Blackhawk helicopter was a stealth model, and that while the damaged helicopter was blown up, it was not completely destroyed, and may end up getting passed onto China, including a specialized fabric on the exterior.  Also, nearby cellular phone service and electricity had been knocked out during the operation, pointing to a possible EMP / microwave pulse from the air.

Will there be another special ops to prevent the remnants of the stealth helicopter from getting into the hands of Russia and China?

Even with S&P warning and the threat of the debt ceiling, the 10-year rate continues its slide

Analyst says WP7 sales are "catastrophic".

Picked this one up on Seattle-PI's Microsoft Blog:

"[Eldar] Murtazin’s number – 674,000 Windows Phones sold [through Dec 2010] – is, well, really bad. 

“In the first quarter of (2011) the difference between the supply and sales grew even more,” Murtazin wrote, as translated by Bing, “and this trend was observed in April.”"

Yes, it took Android 6 months to reach its first 1M units SOLD, but that was off just one model - the G1 - that was slowly introduced into other nations, and that was nearly 3 years ago when the smart phone market was just getting its feet wet.

By contrast, WP7 had 10 phones in 8 nations within its first quarter of sales, end of last year.

Remember how Palm began using "shipped" volume to describe how it was doing in its SEC quarterly filings?  That's what Microsoft did with their Q2-FY2011 (Q4-CY2010).  If you read the transcripts of their Q3-FY2011 (Q1-CY2011) earnings call, they spend all of four sentences on the subject of WP7, none of which talks about growth for the quarter.  In its quarterly SEC filings, it again makes no mention of quarterly growth of WP7 shipments nor sales, even while within the same division (Entertainment and Devices Division or EDD) it breaks out sales of XBox and Kinect devices.

If you look at Comscore's tracking for the US smartphone market, Microsoft actually LOST 1.3 percentage points between 2010-November and 2011-February.

And it makes sense why Microsoft was willing to pay over a billion dollars to tie in with Nokia, following on the internal reports of hemorrhaging market share.  After all, the introduction of WP7 had no effect on the Microsoft's sliding market share.

This leads one to believe that WP7 sales are a massive failure.  Question is, can Nokia help Microsoft, when that first phone isn't slated to be available until early 2012 (or late 2011 at best)?  On the face of things, LG was not happy at all with its sales of WP7 phones back in January, suggesting that, "for tech guys like us [WP7] might be a little bit boring after a week or two."  And my first criticism of WP7 (upon its release) was that it was a lousy GUI that was barely customizable.

So long as WP7's GUI is a bunch of information tiles, it'll suck.  It doesn't take a genius to take one look at Apple's iOS and Android's Froyo / Gingerbread interfaces, to see that WP7 just plain sucks balls on the GUI side.  Information tiles is the engineer's solution to simplifying data for a non-techie person...which is to say, it sucks balls.

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UPDATE 5/4/2011: Canalys reports that WP7 shipments during Q1-CY2011 was about 2.5% of all smartphones, which means that the total market share of WP7 is rapidly shrinking.

I guarantee people in Redmond are panicking, and there is no doubt left that this is why they chose to leave out all data on shipments in their quarterly guidance from yesterday's earnings report.

3D transistors from Intel.

Code-named Ivy Bridge CPUs are the next generation of Intel processors, and they're going to be made with 3D transistors.  Fascinating stuff, considering the size of the actual 3D forms are so minute, they're nearly 1/5th the width of a strand of human hair.

Looks like Moore's Law will be with us for some time to come.  Next up: optical transistors that push us into quantum mechanics and computing...2020?  2025?

Clearwire is throttling me.

When they say "unlimited", it's a false statement, really, because when I signed up, they had no throttling whatsoever. Now, low on cash and bumping up against their backbone bandwidth, seems like the throttling has gotten really bad.

I can't barely watch my shows on Hulu, listen to internet radio, and watch Revision3 shows, without hitting the slooooooooow speeds. How bad is it? 570Kbps in one test and 920Kbps in another, downloads at 1:30 am.

This is unacceptable for 1:30 am; am going to have to consider switching.