http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss machaivel@mac.com Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:45:10 -0700 Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:45:13 -0700 iBlog 1.4.6 Greg Nyquist Greg Nyquist's Blogs Random thoughts on economics, culture, and computers. Greg Nyquist machaivel@mac.com Greg Nyquist's Blogs http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20070810205442/index.html The Federal Reserve, trying to calm turbulent asset markets, announced Friday that it will pump as much liquidity into the U.S. financial system as is needed to prevent the ills of ever tightening credit crunch. In keeping with this goal, the Fed dropped $38 billion of "temporary reserves" into the system. ]]> Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:54:42 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20070810205442/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20070624211718/index.html And why shouldn't Rover try his hand at painting? Surely he can't do any worse than Jackson Pollock and the rest of the Advanced Finger Painting and Paint Flingining Fraternity. But that's exactly what we have, according to talk show host Dennis Prager. ]]> Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:17:18 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20070624211718/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20070617183130/index.html De La Mettrie's Ghost seeks to provide a scientific explanation for free will. The books author, Chris Nunn, argues that "stories," recorded in memory, provide the nexus for choice. Unfortunately, this argument, almost from the beginning, veers toward a sort of cultural determinism. The only freedom that his account of human decision making allows for is an individual's haphazard choice of which stories—i.e., which culturally determined objects—are to dominate his life. ]]> Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:31:30 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20070617183130/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060612222833/index.html We had all better enjoy the summer months, because the economy almost certainly will begin getting worse by the fall. Already, signs of rising inflation are becoming so persistent, that even Fed chairman Bernard Bernanke has been forced to worry about it in public. ]]> Mon, 12 Jun 2006 22:28:33 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060612222833/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20060412150913/index.html This is about as bad as it gets. Please keep a barf bag by your side as you read the following. ]]> Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:09:13 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20060412150913/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060409143051/index.html Finally, someone has hit the nail on the head. Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration for Total and heir presumptive to the French energy multinational, has stated quite clearly what should be obvious right from the start: that the world lacks the means to produce oil to meet rising demand over the next decade. ]]> Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:30:51 -0700 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060409143051/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20060322163413/index.html The British composer Frederick Stocken has recently published a short web-essay denouncing atonality in music. He compares the avant-garde's fixation with atonality to Marxism, and roughs up the avant-garde's golden boy of the late 20th century, Pierre Boulez. See the article here: ]]> Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:34:13 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20060322163413/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060217133308/index.html Finally, it has happened: OS X systems have finally been visited by a piece of malware--a frequent visitor on Windows systems. Curious, though, how it was spread: not through web browsers, or through email clients, as per usual on Windows systems, but, initially at least, through Mac rumors sites. ]]> Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:33:08 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060217133308/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060214145858/index.html Having recently run some tests on a Compaq PC with a pentium 1.7 GHz x86 chip, running a virtual machine with Windows XP Home installed, I thought it might be interesting to compare tests with similar tests run on PPC chips.

G4 iMac: 700 mhz, 384 MB of RAM
G5 iMac 1600 mhz, 1.25 GB of RAM

Note: All tests of the G5 iMac are made with the processor settings set at "automatic" unless otherwise noted.

Note (Feb 6, 2005): Added a few specs from a G4 Powermac. ]]> Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:58:58 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060214145858/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060126170548/index.html In an article entitled "Monetary Myopia" in The Economist, the editors of the British news and economics magazine take aim at Alan Greenspan, whom they say is over-rated. "On Mr Greenspan's watch, America has also experienced the biggest stockmarket and housing bubbles in history," The Economist points out. "Presiding over one bubble could be seen as bad luck; presiding over two smacks of carelessness. The Greenspan era will not end on January 31st. Instead, his legacy will linger in the shape of the biggest economic imbalances in American history: a negative household saving rate and a record current-account deficit. Until these imbalances unwind—a process that could prove painful—it is too soon to applaud Mr Greenspan's record." ]]> Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:05:48 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C458319153/E20060126170548/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060123210923/index.html According to the Security Now! podcast ("Windows MetaFile Backdoor"), the recent Windows metafile exploit, which placed fully patched Windows systems at risk of infection merely by visiting a website, must have been put into the operating system on purpose. While no one knows what the "purpose" of planting such an exploit could possibly be, it is generally thought that it was done without malice. ]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2006 21:09:23 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20060123210923/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20051229112130/index.html Microsoft has issued yet another security advisory, one which attacks fully patched system. Here's how it works. Thousands of websites are distributing spyware that replaces the user's desktop background with a message warning of a spyware infection. A prompt then appears asking the user to enter credit card information to pay for a spyware cleaning application to remove the offending spyware. In other words, spyware to remove the spyware! ]]> Thu, 29 Dec 2005 11:21:30 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20051229112130/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20051221093427/index.html According to recently uncovered secret documents, the Soviet dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin ordered Russia's top animal breeding "scientist," Ilya Ivanov, to create a "living war machine" to fill the ranks of the Soviet Army. "I want a new invincible human being," Stalin told Ivanov, "insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat." ]]> Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:34:27 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20051221093427/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20051213162703/index.html The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has recently given up on supplying an .xxx domain for pornography. Apparently, the decision came about as a result of 6,000 letters sent to the Commerce Department, allegedly from a "cell" of evangelical Christians—in particular, from a group calling itself "Concerned Women for America" (CWA). No doubt, these well-intentioned women were seeking to combat the ubiquity of pornography on the net. They were worried that the .xxx domain would give pornographers a "new platform." What they accomplished, instead, by agitating against the .xxx is to make it harder to control internet pornography. ]]> Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:27:03 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C538124065/E20051213162703/index.html http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20051209164923/index.html Blank Slate by Steven Pinker

This is one of the most important books to appear in recent decades. For most of the 20th century, social scientists have engaged in a long and fruitless denial of the biological factors influencing human behavior. Never mind that this denial goes against nearly everything expressed in great literature about human nature; nor that most of human history stands as testimony against it. ]]> Fri, 09 Dec 2005 16:49:23 -0800 http://homepage.mac.com/machiavel/iblog/B1072909446/C1880974608/E20051209164923/index.html