First webmail, now Del.icio.us. Actually, Delicious went first. The webmail ban isn’t supposed to go in for another week. Why is this annoying? Because I bookmark work-related sites through Delicious. Sure, that’s not all I use it for. But a big chunk of my bookmarks there are reference for work. And now I can’t get to them. And I’m not saying they don’t have the right to block what they want, because it’s their network, and they can block all IP addresses divisible by 17 if they want. I’m just saying it’s stupid, it makes me less effective, and it annoys me to no end.
Author: Jon
From the mouth of Jobs himself
Steve Jobs has reiterated that you’re renting all $30 million worth of iPhone apps you’ve purchased. Engagdet says,
[he] confirmed the controversial iPhone application kill switch in the event that Apple inadvertently approves a malicious program for distribution. Jobs said, “hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull.”
He went on to say, “We know you all love to buy anything with our name on it, though, so you should be happy to repurchase anything we decide we don’t want you to have anymore”.
Of all the dumb things to say
I’ve always been a fan of Mike Mussina. He broke into the league in 1991, and quickly became a star the next season. He was a big part of some exciting Orioles teams that kept losing to the Blue Jays. I’ve never been a fan of Murray Chass. He’s a favorite target of Fire Joe Morgan, and deservedly so. He recently started a blog, but refuses to call it a blog, refuses to allow comments . . . He pretty much took all that’s good about a blog and threw it away, while taking all that’s bad about journalism and put it on a pedestal. Anyway, today he’s writing about Mike Mussina. He has no idea what he’s talking about. So, because Mussina is having a good year at age 39, and people think he might finally break the 20-win mark for the first time, we’re starting to hear talk about the Hall of Fame. That seems pretty reasonable – five of the ten comparable pitchers listed at Baseball Reference are in the Hall, and at least one more (Curt Schilling) has a good shot. What does Murray Chass think about this? “Mussina has an impressive career won-lost record (265-151) but not much else.” His won-lost record is actually the least impressive thing about his career. Sure, he’s 39th all time in winning percentage for players with 100 decisions. That’s pretty good. But won-lost record is a pretty useless measure of a player’s actual ability. Let’s look, though, at the good measures of a player’s actual ability. Let’s look at WHIP, 1.19, 9th among active players. Let’s look at K/BB ratio, 3.56, 13th all time. Or how about strikeouts, 2759, 21st all time. All of those are much better measures of a pitcher’s ability, and in all of those Mussina compares well with Hall of Fame pitchers. What else does Chass have to say? He compares Mussina to some of his compatriots who are not in the Hall – Tommy John, Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat. “All had career victory totals in the 280s. Except for winning percentage, all had better records than Mussina.” I’m not even sure I can address that. What does it even mean? Let’s start with Tommy John. 288-231 career record, a winning percentage of .555. That’s not nearly as good as Mussina. Neither is his 1.28 WHIP, 1.78 K/BB, or total strikeouts, 2245. Then look at Jim Kaat. 283-237 (.544), 1.26 WHIP, 2.27 K/BB, 2461 K. Not in the same league. Now, Blyleven is harder to bash, because he, like Mussina, deserves to be in the Hall. He’s become something of a sabermetrics poster boy. He excelled in the “new-fangled” stats like WHIP (1.20), K/BB (2.80), strikeouts (3701), 5th all time. But he played on crummy teams, and compiled a 287-250 record (.534), and it’s keeping him out of the Hall.
John and Kaat were each 20-game winners three times, Blyleven once. Mussina doesn’t come close to the number of complete games and shutouts any of the three had. The three had slightly lower totals of baserunners per nine innings. But why let facts get in the way of a partisan view?
I’m not sure how he’s measuring baserunners per nine innings, because all three are higher than Mussina. It’s true, Musinna’s complete games and shutouts are low. But no one (except Roy Halladay) finishes games anymore. Mussina is fourth in both categories among active pitchers, so he compares well to present-day pitchers. So, Murray Chass, I can only conclude that you are either a moron or a Red Sox fan. You certainly don’t seem to know a whole lot about baseball.
Investing for the l33t
I was reading this article about the failure of some ETFs to really commit to their theme. He talks about some ETFs that claim to be based on wind power but have holdings like BP that really don’t depend on the success of wind power at all. The most interesting part of the article, though, wasn’t really his point. It was an ETF called PowerShares Global Wind Energy Portfolio. For some of you their ticker symbol, PWND, means nothing. For others, it has a rich and humorous meaning. In any event, I was looking at the Google Finance page for the fund, and saw the a discussion thread that caught my eye. I don’t know why these things make me laugh so much, but they do, and this did. I guess I’m just a sucker for dumb internet memes that won’t go away.
A call for financial advice
I just finished rolling over my old 401K from a former employer into an IRA. So now I have a lot more control over what I can do with one chunk of my retirement savings. The question is, what to do? I’m looking for advice, and I’m looking for a good resource to get an overview of investing. I mean, a friend mentioned beaten-down financial sector ETFs. I had to Google “ETF”. I don’t want to invest in something that I have to Google until I learn a bit more about it. Anyone have advice on a good place to start?
A congestion tax alone is not enough
I’ve long thought that a large congestion tax on cars entering DC would be great. Charge $10 to enter the city. Take most of that cash and spend it on expanding Metro and putting giant parking garages out at the end of the Metro lines. Make those garages FREE. It would make public transportation a heck of a lot more attractive. They’ve tried it in London with mixed results:
At first, the new fees did seem to ease the traffic moving through the congestion zone. Now, studies are finding that the measure has actually managed to somehow slow down the pace of traffic through central London.
The problem here is the reason it hasn’t helped – construction and new pedestrian walkways have caused more traffic jams than before. It got rid of 100,000 cars each day, so it sounds like it made a huge difference. I don’t think it’s fair to blame London’s mismanagement of construction and pedestrians on the congestion tax.
I love to hate the iPhone
I know my opinion on Apple and the iPhone differs from many of my readers, but this is worrisome if you’ve bought an iPhone and mistakenly think you’ve bought an app from the App Store. Engadget | iPhone hacker says the device ‘calls home’ to Apple, allows apps to be remotely disabled
the suggestion that a process of the OS would actively monitor, report on, and possibly deactivate your device’s software is unreasonable, and clearly presents an issue that the company will have to deal with sooner or later.
If you buy something, and the seller can take it back at any time for any reason and not give back your money, you are renting, not buying. Because of the closed and proprietary nature of Apple’s world, if you buy into it, you’re stuck with whatever they want to do to you. Updated to add: Engadget says that the iPhone probably isn’t calling home to disable your apps after all. I still don’t like Apple, and I still don’t trust them any more than I trust Microsoft. But it doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything objectionable here.
Didn’t mean to censor the TSA propaganda
Someone (Or, more likely, some script) claiming to be Bob from TSA Blog left a comment on this post. It was a totally useless press release talking about the ineffective things TSA is planning to do about the lost (now found) laptop. Despite the fact that it fits my definition of spam (It wasn’t a response to the post, which “Bob” clearly didn’t read, it was a monologue on the same subject with a link to the author’s blog), I published it. But due to a little snafu with the back button and not paying attention, I accidentally deleted it. So, sorry to censor your spam, TSA Bob. If you post again, I’ll publish it again. But note well that spamming blogs that call out your stupidity and/or incompetence is not going to do a bit of good, and you might be better off finding something more useful to do with your time. Edit to add: Here is the text of the propaganda, stolen from the original Boing Boing post’s comments.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) continues to investigate the circumstances surrounding the loss of a Clear®- owned laptop computer on July 26 that contained unencrypted data of approximately 33,000 customers. TSA has verified that a laptop was discovered by Clear® officials yesterday at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). It was voluntarily surrendered to TSA officials for forensic examination. TSA’s regulatory role in this matter is as follows: Every commercial airport is required to have an approved airport security plan. So Register Traveler is part of that comprehensive plan at the airports where it operates. Under the airport security plan, the sponsoring entity, (SFO in this case) is required to assure its vendors have an approved information security program. Because the computer at SFO was not encrypted it is in violation of the airport’s security plan. TSA also has the ability to go directly to vendors when the plan is not being adhered to so TSA is conducting a broad review of all Registered Traveler providers’ information systems and data security processes to ensure compliance with security regulations. Clear® needs to meet the information security requirements that they agreed to as part of the Register Traveler program before their enrollment privileges will be reinstated. Encryption is the wider issue as opposed to one incident with one laptop. So for now, Clear® enrollments remain curtailed. Current customers will not experience any disruption when using Registered Traveler. Bob TSA EoS Blog Team
The worst part about this is that TSA’s response to this seems to be a stern wag of the finger at the contractor. I feel safer already.
Let’s blow this way out of proportion!
Orioles rookie Chris Waters, so green he doesn’t even have a Baseball-Reference.com major league page yet, made his debut last night in the bigs, making the Angels look silly. He opened his career by striking out Chone Figgins on three pitches. Unfortunately, the wife and I only watched the first five innings – the game was in LA/Anaheim/Sacramento/whatever and didn’t start until 10 Eastern. But Waters didn’t need us – 8 innings, one hit, three walks, and a hit batter. No runs. That sure takes away the sting of Brandon Fahey’s demotion. Anyway, despite the fact that he’s making his debut just shy of his 28th birthday, and the small sample size, I’m going to go ahead and call him a first ballot Hall of Famer. I predict he’ll give up his first earned run sometime in 2011 (and it won’t be his fault), become the first pitcher in years to win 30 games in a season, and cure cancer with his curveball. ESPN wrap
Speaking of IT security and idiots
It seems a TSA contractor has misplaced an unencrypted laptop full of people’s personal information
The Transportation Security Administration suspended Verified Identity Pass Inc., the company that operates the registered traveler program under the brand name Clear, from enrolling new applicants due to the alleged theft of the unencrypted laptop.
Link from Boing Boing, but they kind of dropped the ball by not mentioning the unencrypted status of the missing laptop. Luckily one of the comments mentioned it. Keep in mind this is entirely against TSA regulations (I worked there for 9 months). TSA is colossally stupid sometimes, like when they made me take my unencrypted (before the regulation went into effect) laptop home on the Metro every day for a week rather than leaving it in the secure facility where I worked. But I’m almost inclined to not blame them for the actions of a contractor.
TSA officials said the suspension will protect consumers waiting to enroll in the Clear program and allow the company to bring its procedures into compliance.
How about making them give back all the money due to breach of contract? There’s no accountability in government contracting.