All along two contrasting views have been held on what ails the financial system. The first is that this is essentially a panic. The second is that this is a problem of insolvency.

Under the first view, the prices of a defined set of “toxic assets” have been driven below their long-run value and in some cases have become impossible to sell. The solution, many suggest, is for governments to make a market, buy assets or insure banks against losses. This was the rationale for the original Tarp and the “super-SIV (special investment vehicle)” proposed by Henry (Hank) Paulson, the previous Treasury secretary, in 2007.

Under the second view, a sizeable proportion of financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities. The International Monetary Fund argues that potential losses on US-originated credit assets alone are now $2,200bn (€1,700bn, £1,500bn), up from $1,400bn just last October. This is almost identical to the latest estimates from Goldman Sachs. In recent comments to the Financial Times, Nouriel Roubini of RGE Monitor and the Stern School of New York University estimates peak losses on US-generated assets at $3,600bn. Fortunately for the US, half of these losses will fall abroad. But, the rest of the world will strike back: as the world economy implodes, huge losses abroad – on sovereign, housing and corporate debt – will surely fall on US institutions, with dire effects.

...

The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once. It is an important, but secondary, question whether the right answer is to create new “good banks”, leaving old bad banks to perish, as my colleague, Willem Buiter, recommends, or new “bad banks”, leaving cleansed old banks to survive. I also am inclined to the former, because the culture of the old banks seems so toxic.

By asking the wrong question, Mr Obama is taking a huge gamble. He should have resolved to cleanse these Augean banking stables. He needs to rethink, if it is not already too late.

FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks

Last Monday I was in a car accident and suffered a severe concussion that didn't manifest symptoms for 24 hours (weird, I know). Since then I've periodically lost the ability to speak. I go from normal speech to slurring, to mute. Its being looked at, but the reason I made this thread is because... I realized that it is exactly like TCP packets overloading the sliding window, or a web server with limited resources getting too many requests: overload the throughput on the queue and everything after that is lost.

So I made a diagram tonight when I had a bad episode to prove I can still think.

When things are bad, and I fill the shrunken word queue, I can't speak until it self empties. Full empty seems to take between 30 seconds and one minute, and seems to happen at a linear rate. However, if I limit myself to the actual word queue/minute throughput, I can speak continuously for a longer period. Normal speed speech very quickly fills the queue though.

Strange, but accurate. If my mind is a Turing Machine, my word queue is malfunctioning and is too small to hold enough words to speak normally.

My Post Concussive Syndrome Speech Disorder: A Malfunctioning Word Queue

ATDC is pleased to announce SeedSpace. SeedSpace is approximately 1,200 square feet that ATDC has set aside for early seed stage companies that have both a pressing need for office space and a desire to enter ATDC's incubator program. It's somewhat like coworking, but really startups at work. Think of it as an early stage incubator within an incubator.

We have been working on making SeedSpace a reality since last August. The drivers being to find room for entrepreneurs when they are in the early stages of concept development as well as ventures that are not quite ATDC ready but need space.

As I predicted on my personal blog last year, SeedSpace remains within the mission of ATDC to help Georgia technology entrepreneurs. What we want to do with SeedSpace is better assist technology startups and the entrepreneurs that create them.

So what is SeedSpace?

* Seven individually keyed offices
* Eight workstations
* Use of three third floor conference rooms
* Free Internet access
* 90 day lease terms
* 120 day max time in Seed Space
* 24 hour proximty card access
* Discounted parking

Prices are currently $225 for an office and $150 for a workstation. As this program is designed for entrepreneurs and companies that have a desire to enter ATDC's incubator program the best way to learn more is to complete an inquiry and someone will be in touch with you in short order.

Peach Seedz: SeedSpace

Atlanta non-profit bike cooperative to host fifth annual Broken Hearts and Bicycle Parts benefit party and bicycle scavenger hunt on March 6 - 7, 2009

Contact: Rachael Spiewak, 404-425-9989, info@sopobikes.org, http://www.sopobikes.org

Who: Sopo Bike Co-op, Atlanta's nonprofit community bicycle repair shop.

What: Broken Hearts and Bicycle Parts is a weekend of friend and fundraising events for Sopo Bicycle Co-op, including a benefit show on Friday night at Lenny's Bar and an Alley Cat (bicycle scavenger hunt) on Saturday night. Last year's event drew 150 cyclists, and raised $2,000 for the co-op.

The benefit show features entertainment by Brittany Bosco, Futureshock, Atlanta Sedition Orchestra, and the Krewe of Grateful Gluttons (Lenny's Bar, 21+, $5 or free with Alley Cat Preregistration, 9 pm until close). The couples Alley Cat meets at Graveyard Tavern, and will take teams of two on a semi-competitive tour of the city, ending at Wonderroot for prizes and food (18+, $20 per couple or $12 per single entry, 6 pm, Preregister online at www.sopobikes.org). Prizes mostly given for style, with some for speed. Helmets, lights, and locks strongly encouraged.

MP3s:
Brittany Bosco - City of Nowhere: http://www.stereocupcake.com/music/nowhere.mp3
Futureshock - Partyline: http://sopobikes.org/static/futureshock-partyline.mp3

When: March 6-7, 2009. Full event details available at: www.sopobikes.org/events/broken-hearts

Where: Sopo Bicycle Cooperative, 465-C Flat Shoals Ave, Atlanta, GA 30316
Graveyard Tavern, 1245 Glenwood Ave SE, Atlanta, GA, 30316
Wonderroot, 982 Memorial Drive, Atlanta, GA 30316
Lenny's Bar, 486 Decatur Street SE Atlanta, GA 30312

How to get involved: Community members are invited to attend and participate in all events (see above for age restrictions). Sopo is still looking for prizes and food donations. All contributions are tax deductible.

Event Poster: http://tr.im/fp78

Sopo is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that operates a community bicycle repair shop founded in 2004 by bike lovers in Atlanta. The volunteer-based do-it-yourself shop is open 7 pm - 10 pm Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays, and 2 pm - 6 pm Saturdays and Sundays. It is located at 465-C Flat Shoals Ave., Atlanta, 30316, behind the Australian Bakery. For more information, visit www.sopobikes.org or call 404-425-9989.

This is always a really good time, for a really good cause.

Sopo Bicycle Cooperative - Broken Hearts Fundraiser - 2009 press release

Running Synergy

Synergy lets you use one keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. To do so it requires that all the computers are connected to each other via TCP/IP networking. Most systems come with this installed.

Got this working in 15 minutes. Neat!

Synergy - Share Keyboard/Mouse Across Multiple Comptuers

Some guys go for the backlash beard — ungroomed growth meant to defy the fussy scrubs and sprays of yesterday’s metrosexual. Others sport recession stubble: 5, 6 and 7 o’clock shadow in desperate need of a time clock. There are beards grown on bets, mustaches that raise money and whiskers worn simply (and sensibly) for winter warmth.

And then there are your ’stachinistas.

Hairy economy trend: Beards are back - Skin and beauty- msnbc.com

The quality of the initial open source package is certainly a huge decision factor. In healthcare, not many comprehensive open source packages are available. The Veteran's Administration (VA), however, did release with OpenVistA a very comprehensive EMR product, used in the daily operation of over 130 VA hospitals and clinics across the nation. OpenVistA was registered with SourceForge in 2003 and receives about 100 downloads a day, which is considerable for a specialized EMR system. OpenVistA has been translated into several languages and implemented in many hospitals outside the U.S., which shows the potential of open source for global cooperation. Currently, it is based on MUMPs and C#, but since it is open source, a potential user could re-write the front end, for example, in Java, to make it platform independent. Another emerging open source package comes from Tolven, which is more focused on the needs of primary care physicians and personal health records.

Example by @StephenFleming of a successful FOSS software project by the VA, they created an EMR system and open sourced it.

Open Source in Healthcare: Cui bono? - Healthcare Information Technology

The straight dope

Our nameservers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

OpenDNS - Small/Medium Business - Use OpenDNS

In essence, you can do almost anything to a single record* — that’s a map step. But you are sharply limited in how you combine information about multiple (often intermediate) records – that’s a reduce step. Still, reduce steps let you do counts, sums, or other aggregations. That, plus the general power of map steps, makes MapReduce useful for at least three major classes of applications:

1. Text tokenization, indexing, and search
2. Creation of other kinds of data structures (e.g., graphs)
3. Data mining and machine learning

Except for the building of entire search engines, these are all application areas that data warehouse users should and do care about. And they all still could benefit from large performance increases, as is evidenced by the routine compromises analysts make in areas such as data reduction, sampling, over-simplified models and the like.

Why MapReduce matters to SQL data warehousing | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Everything back then took work and time. In rural America, it wasn't unusual to walk five miles to a friend's house to play a few games of checkers. Life was monotonous and physically challenging. In the countryside there was no plumbing and electricity hadn't been invented yet. You spent a lot of time hauling around water, chopping firewood, planting and tending crops. It took nearly continuous physical activity. Leisure was no different: it took time, work, and active minds.

Want to socialize, hang out with the buds? It was a big deal, a special day. You'd either walk a ways or get on your horse and ride. If it were a really big day, like election, you'd hitch the wagon up to the plow team. It was a lot of work and hassle, but eventually you'd end up at the dance, the election, the church, the pub, or wherever. There would be drinking and story-telling ugoing on for hours on end. Hey -- these were your friends and it took a lot of hassle to spend time with them. For instance, when the American Colonies were formed, Ben Franklin and a few other delegates threw a kegger before everybody else arrived that went on for several days.

...

Technology is Heroin.

It's still very early. We're still in the phase of expecting some even better technology to come along and save us from this problem. Programmers are creating "no procrastinate" options for their web sites in order to help users not spend so much time there. Programs are being written to track online time to show users where they are spending all of their energy. The new addictive program will eliminate the ills of the old one.

Meanwhile, people get fatter and fatter, unable to get around or physically accomplish normal chores from a 100 years ago. Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read (news flash: the printed book industry is on the way out unless this trend stops), and social organizations like churches and civic clubs see fewer and fewer members attend their meetings. The skills that are increasing? Reflex time. Ability to solve abstract, short-timespan problems. Basically the skills we need to interact with our entertainment. More and more, Indians and Chinese -- people coming from cultures who have been shut out of the technical world until recently -- are writing software for hardcore western appetites to consume.

Technology is Heroin - What To Fix