The death of the URL | FactoryCity

Everyday, when you fire up your browser and type in some arbitrary URL in the browser’s address bar, you are taking the red pill.

via factoryjoe.com

I am not as paranoid, but an interesting take on the situation nonetheless.

Posted via web from Mike's Lifestream

Philip Greenspun’s Weblog » How Wall Street is making its billions

Wall Street banks have had profitable quarters. JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion in profit (more than $1 billion per month). Goldman Sachs was only slightly behind, at $3.2 billion. These profits supposedly came from “trading.” I asked a friend who has worked in the money business how this was possible. “For someone to make money trading, there has to be someone on the other side of every trade who is losing money. Where does each bank find someone who can lose $1 billion every month?”

He explained that “carry trade” would be a more accurate description of what they’re doing. Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.

I asked if they were taking any risk in order to earn this return. “If interest rates went up to 20 percent, even though the bonds are short-term, the price of the bond could fall enough to make the trade a money-loser.” (Though since the banks are too big to fail, they would simply be bailed out with additional taxpayer funds.)

What kind of bonds are they buying? Are they investing the money in American business? “No, they are mostly buying Treasuries.” So the money is just being shuffled from one Federal bank account to another, with each Wall Street bank skimming off $1 billion per month for itself? “Pretty much.”

[An more old-fashioned way of making supranormal returns is insider trading, which was perfectly legal until the Crash of 1929 (history). The New York Times ran a story yesterday on Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge fund manager who invested heavily in inside information. Rolling Stone published "Wall Street's Naked Swindle" on October 14. The story is much more sensational and entertaining than anything from the Times. It covers a guy who spent $1.7 million on out-of-the-money put options on Bear Stearns on March 11, 2008. The options would become worthless on March 20, just 9 days later, unless Bear Stearns basically went bust. Bear Stearns collapsed the next day and the guy made a $270 million profit. He has never been identified by the SEC.]

via blogs.law.harvard.edu

Dear President Obama and Congress, can I have this deal too? I believe that in borrowing money from the government for 0% interest, I too could help the economy recover. I could become "too big to fail" at some point, and would strive to do so as soon as possible.

Posted via web from Mike's Lifestream

Cartoonists Respond to Obama’s Nobel Prize Win | Cartoon News

via blog.cagle.com

Nice collection of cartoonist reactions to Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Posted via web from Mike's Lifestream

More Technology Groups in Columbus, Ohio

My original post of technology groups in Columbus, Ohio has been updated a couple of times since initially published. More groups have formed since then too so I wanted to try to highlight these for others with similar interests.

Developer groups:
Columbus Javascript User Group (CBUSJS)
Columbus iPhone Developers User Group (CIDUG)

Security focused groups:
Central Ohio ISSA
ISACA Central Ohio Chapter
Central Ohio InfraGard Chapter

Finally, an important group has formed since my initial post that contains links to many of these groups and the meeting schedules. Columbus Tech Life is a wiki with information on bloggers, technology focused people, companies, groups, events, and more happening in or around Columbus.

Technology Groups in Columbus, Ohio

I have been trying to collect information for all of the technology related groups in Columbus and Central Ohio. The lists below are what I have so far and I will continue to add to this post as I discover others:

Languages and Developers:
Central Ohio .NET Developers Group
Central Ohio Java Users Group
Columbus PHP Developers
Columbus Ruby Brigade
Central Ohio Python mailing list
PyOhio
Rethink Columbus
Central Ohio Chapter of the Extreme Programming Users Group
Columbus MySQL Users
Central Ohio SQL Server Special Interest Group

Operating Systems:
Central Ohio Linux User Group
Buckeye Mac Group
MacForum
Central Ohio VMware Users Group

Applications:
Columbus Digital: Adobe Users Group
Central Ohio Sharepoint Users Group
Columbus Ohio Rational Users Group
Central Ohio Drupal Group

Co-working:
CoSpace Columbus
Corkboard

Social:
Columbus Social Media Cafe
Twitter tracking for Columbus
cSUDs: Columbus Startup Drinks
Columbus Startup Weekend
Columbus IT Martini
Podcamp Ohio

Other:
Columbus Tech Life
Columbus Architecture Group
Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group

Association of IT Professionals - Columbus Chapter
Web Analytics Wednesday (Tuesday)
Columbus Ohio Usability Professionals Association
TechColumbus
Technology for Ohio's Tomorrow
Columbus Robotics Society
Dorkbot Columbus
Columbus Computer Society
BarCampOhio
Convergence Columbus
The Fuse Factory
Freegeek Columbus

What am I missing? Add in comments or mail me and I will add to the post. Thanks.

Pitching Ideas at a Startup Weekend

Third in a series of posts on Startup Weekend Columbus. You can read the first post about how to be loved by your peers at Startup Weekend here and the second post for developers here.

Some suggestions for how to pitch ideas at a Startup Weekend event:

1. Don't pitch the company as if you are the "original founder".
2. Everyone at Startup Weekend is a founder in the company created at Startup Weekend.
3. No matter how much work you have already put into the project, by pitching your idea at Startup Weekend, you are opening it up to new people and essentially starting over. That is a good thing.
4. Don't try to run the show. Be willing to listen to feedback. Something better might come out of it.
   
5. Lots of smart people go to Startup Weekend events, listen to them, you might learn something and get a chance to build something even better than you could imagine.
   

At Startup Weekend Columbus one of the groups that came out of the Friday evening voting process had 2 idea/business people that had already done a large amount of work to verify the business case, talked with Angel investors and VCs, talked with other companies in a somewhat related industry about leveraging their platform, already architected part of the solution, and generally had done everything except legally establish a company and build a proof of concept. One of these idea/business guys went as far as to say THEY were the "founders" of the company to be established. That immediately made me, one of the people that was thinking about working on the idea for the weekend take a step back and reconsider if this was the right project for me for this weekend. What would I be getting out of the weekend if I put in a bunch of hard work to build these guys a nice prototype? It was clear they intended to continue with the idea well past Startup Weekend. It appeared to me they were just looking to leverage developers attending Startup Weekend to build the proof of concept (POC).

I think after the Friday evening voting the group was formed at about 16 people. By Saturday morning I think the group was down to about 6 people. I think this was all because of the way the "original founders" presented the idea to the group. By opening it up to new ideas or features, by starting with some brainstorming and potentially improving the "proven" idea, they may have been able to get some buy-in from the group and create something great.

This is not to say they won't build something great or that they won't be successful. They seemed to have lots of support from TechColumbus before Startup Weekend, so they have the connections to be successful. This is more just an explanation on why I decided not to work with that group and why a couple other people I met decided to drop out of the group and form a splinter group. Our splinter group ended up working on EventStart. The original group can remain unnamed to protect the innocent. This was all just my opinion and I am not interested in burning bridges. Lots of bright people, it is a small world, bound to run into these people again some day, etc. Loved the idea, didn't enjoy the execution.

Thoughts for Developers going to Startup Weekend

Second in a series of posts on Startup Weekend Columbus. You can read the first post here.

Having just gone through Startup Weekend Columbus last weekend, these were some thoughts I had that might help developers or architects attending future Startup Weekends:

1. Bring a laptop, pre-loaded with the development tools you are comfortable using.
   
2. Create a source code repository on a public site in advance (github, bitbucket.org, google code). For EventStart, one of our developers already had a github account.
   
3. Know your tools, use what you know, don't try to learn over the weekend. If you haven't used git before, don't make this the weekend you try to convince people to use it and then try to learn it on the fly. You have more important things to worry about and learn this weekend - i.e. getting a company launched.
4. Have a public web server host available. For EventStart, one of our developers already had a slicehost account setup. This was immensely helpful.
5. Don't be religious about your development methodology. Not everyone does pair programming. Not everyone is a Ruby on Rails developer. Not everyone uses emacs or vi or vim or TextMate or Visual Studio 2008. Allow the other developers in the group to work the way they are used to working.
   
6. Divide and conquer. Startup Weekend is very intense. Lots of ideas, lots of tasks. Most people that come to these events are extremely bright. Leverage the strengths of the developers by assigning tasks and responsibilities then let them loose. Go, go, go.
7. Remember, the assignment for the weekend is to get something done. This code does not need to live forever, does not need to work for every edge case, does not need to do everything you can possibly imagine. You are building a prototype more than a real, working production scalable solution. Keep that in mind, take shortcuts.