From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:56:43 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYT007ER56AC3@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:46:58 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B114AA724 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:48:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E80F5A8 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:08:53 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.163]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3703B99 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:08:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.163]) with mapi; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:08:43 -0700 Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:08:01 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] a pointer good question Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778ED7@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: approve:hamming a pointer good question Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlmXE2e7X0r+ylkasb4kKQjAfbA== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 07079B58-0259-11DD-BE06-EE4657A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Gerry Faulhaber [gerry-faulhaber@mchsi.com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 11:03 AM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps I've read with interest (and a little amusement) this IP thread on the financial meltdown re: CDOs, MBSs and what-all: watching techies explain the financial system is much like watching economists explain ultrawideband (and most of us were snoozing during the Fourier transform class in DiffEQ). Kind of in over their heads, although some respondents have been getting close. The Economist magazine had an excellent, not-for-experts Briefing a week ago; I would highly recommend this reading: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D10881318 . My take is that The Economist doesn't always get it right, but they are a better source for economic issues than IP (sorry, Dave). [ IP got you to po= int djf] Prof Gerry Faulhaber Wharton School and Penn Law School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19103 -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:14 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYT00EONDJW9R@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:47:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 288ABAD66 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:49:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29CF798 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:55:37 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.163]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63A1193 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:55:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.163]) with mapi; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:55:27 -0700 Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:55:14 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Re: : good question Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778ED9@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Re: : good question Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIln0ORBwC0KJ5IEy5eIW23HvsJw== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 521AF2CC-0270-11DD-A746-774B57A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Charles Brown [cbrown@flyingcircuit.com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 1:01 PM To: David Farber; To: ip@v2.listbox.com Cc: Charles Brown Subject: Re: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps Dear Professor, I am a long-time subscriber to the The Economist magazine. I'm sure like m= any others on the IP List, I read your post with interest and amusement. W= hile we all here on the IP list could no doubt benefit from your experience= and knowledge of the subject, I would highly recommend this reading: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D10880496 My take is that a much bigger risk to all of us is a lack of political will= which caused the sinister and horrible stagflation that Japan and its peop= le have been subjected to since their asset bubble burst in the 80's. The = German banks are taking their losses. We should do the same. This is wha= t Barney Frank has proposed and I think that's the right thing to do. The = government is the lender of last resort but only after the investment banks= have taken the losses properly allocated to them. That would be a much bi= gger confidence-booster. Instead, we get pedantic rhetoric like, "it's too= complex for you morons out there" and "I'm an expert on the Depression", a= nd people on Wall Street and in finance are "brilliant." Just what we need= here, more brilliant experts! The shareholders of the investment banks are wiped-out, it's that simple. = If it so happens a great majority of those shareholders happen to be Wall S= treet insiders and their friends, that's no reason to continue this charade= to what I perceive as the continuing detriment to the people. It the inve= stment banks can't raise the capital they need in the market, they have out= lived their usefulness. Perhaps you could educate us about the situation at the commercial banks in= this situation. This is where most of us have our money and loans. How d= eep are they into the derivatives market? Last time I was in Wells Fargo a= bout the most aggressive thing I saw them pushing was documented home equit= y loans. Charles Brown ________________________________________ From: Gerry Faulhaber [gerry-faulhaber@mchsi.com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 11:03 AM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps I've read with interest (and a little amusement) this IP thread on the financial meltdown re: CDOs, MBSs and what-all: watching techies explain the financial system is much like watching economists explain ultrawideband (and most of us were snoozing during the Fourier transform class in DiffEQ). Kind of in over their heads, although some respondents have been getting close. The Economist magazine had an excellent, not-for-experts Briefing a week ago; I would highly recommend this reading: http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D10881318 . My take is that The Economist doesn't always get it right, but they are a better source for economic issues than IP (sorry, Dave). [ IP got you to po= int djf] Prof Gerry Faulhaber Wharton School and Penn Law School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19103 -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:23 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from chiclet.listbox.com (chiclet.pobox.com [208.210.124.77]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYT00411GQTBW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:56:53 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71D251AAEF7 for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:58:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14F439B for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:39:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.164]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C8F48D for ; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:39:27 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.164]) with mapi; Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:39:25 -0700 Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:39:11 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] IBM patent for responding to natural disaster To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EDA@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: IBM patent for responding to natural disaster Thread-Index: AQHIlouVjmFsfa5F6UWQd4U2w5KjeA== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: D813C6F2-027E-11DD-8F9D-52E856A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Sashikumar N [sashikumar.n@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 3:27 PM To: David Farber Subject: IBM patent for responding to natural disaster Dear Prof Dave Coming on the heels of news that IBM is developing stochastic programs to manage natural disasters http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/26605 , people have pointed to actual IBM patent for such thing http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=3DPTO1&Sect2=3DHITOFF&d=3D= PG01&p=3D1&u=3D%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=3D1&f=3DG&l=3D50&s1=3D%22= 20080077463%22.PGNR.&OS=3DDN/20080077463&RS=3DDN/20080077463. isn't this stretching a bit far for patent? Would some body who does a programming to manage such disasters would violate IBM patent? regards sashi -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:24 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYN00GF8HME32@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:30:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48917A470 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:31:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB5537000C2 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:48:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.225]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6878F7000CB for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:48:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.225]) with mapi; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:48:02 -0700 Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:47:45 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Re: Music Tax Plan Warner's has hired Jim Griffin To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EA0@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: approve:hamming Re: Music Tax Plan Warner's has hired Jim Griffin Thread-Index: AQHIk/8AlvHc9w1KLki8VtuTD20fjA== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 4081D826-FFF2-11DC-90F5-5E57057AF5B5 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: David P. Reed [dpreed@reed.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 9:05 AM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] Music Tax Plan Warner's has hired Jim Griffin Given that Commissioner Martin has pushed hard for unbundling cable channels, I wonder why monopoly franchise holders will be permitted (as a matter of antitrust law) to "bundle" a new fee for services that many users may not want? OK, I forgot. The antitrust laws have been eviscerated. Government is free to hand out monopolies to its best campaign contributors, and faux "competition" will keep it in check. All of us lovers of Warner's packaged product will be thrilled that our neighbors are subsidizing the marketing and distribution to us. David Farber wrote: > ________________________________________ > From: K.E. [admin@edu-cyberpg.com] > Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 8:56 PM > To: ip@v2.listbox.com; David Farber > Subject: Music Tax Plan Warner's has hired Jim Griffin > > Fee For All > http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/27/Warners-New-Web-Gu= ru > Warner's has hired Jim Griffin to spearhead a controversial plan to bundl= e a monthly fee into consumers' internet-service bills for unlimited access= to music. > "Bronfman has asked Griffin, formerly Geffen Music's digital chief, to de= velop a model that would create a pool of money from user fees to be distri= buted to artists and copyright holders. Warner has given Griffin a three-ye= ar contract to form a new organization to spearhead the plan. " > > Karen Ellis > > ------------------------------------------- > > -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:24 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from orion.listbox.com (orion.listbox.com [207.106.133.18]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYN004GLGMGD9@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:08:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D7AB7000E1 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:09:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C794B97 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:03:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.225]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 234CD99 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:03:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.225]) with mapi; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:03:02 -0700 Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:02:47 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] IBM Suspended from Federal Government Contracts To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EA2@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: approve:hamming IBM Suspended from Federal Government Contracts Thread-Index: AQHIlAEXh5MNUp8ySUeNwKCbYtSdQQ== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 5B2AC582-FFF4-11DC-A23A-FC4B57A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Kevin G. Barkes [kgbarkes@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 9:53 AM To: David Farber Subject: IBM Suspended from Federal Government Contracts BM suspended from federal government contracts by Declan McCullagh IBM has been indefinitely barred from entering into new contracts with the U.S. federal government. The General Services Administration's Web site shows that IBM was added to a database of "excluded" contractors and subcontractors on March 27 by the Environmental Protection Agency. Under reciprocity rules, other agencies honor the exclusion. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9906939-7.html Regards, KGB ----- Kevin G. Barkes Email: kgbarkes@yahoo.com KGB Report: http://www.kgbreport.com Commentwear by KGB: http://www.commentwear.com National Temperature Index: http://nationaltemperatureindex.com DCL Dialogue on line: http://www.dcldialogue.com Random Quotations Generator: http://www.goodquotations.com Over 13,000 searchable quotations. -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:25 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYN00I61I9QAJ@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:44:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 71857A259 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:45:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1E6871A6742 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:05:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.163]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E449F1A673E for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:05:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.163]) with mapi; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:05:12 -0700 Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:03:59 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry' I dont think it is april 1 To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EA3@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: approve:hamming World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry' I dont think it is april 1 Thread-Index: AQHIlAFmiJgk5jOkHECbdJKly8ZarQ== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: B4A04754-FFF4-11DC-BC7D-931FD573CA01 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Bill Stewart [bill.stewart@pobox.com] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 1:25 PM To: David Farber Subject: World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry' On the subject of "America's broadband providers falling behind other countries", Scandinavia and Korea have certainly been ahead of us in speed, but the real question is how effective the applications are that can use it; if it's just providing another delivery medium for television, or faster BitTorrent, that's hardly exciting. http://www.thelocal.se/10810/20080331/ World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry' Published: 31 Mar 08 13:44 CET Online: http://www.thelocal.se/10810/ Last summer a 75-year-old woman from Karlstad became the envy of internet users worldwide. With her blistering 40 gigabits per second connection, Sigbritt L=F6thberg had the world's fastest internet connection - many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user had experienced such a high speed. So, after nine months with the ability to download a full high definition DVD in just two seconds or access 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously, how has Sigbritt's life changed? Not much, according to Hafsteinn Jonsson, who is heading up the fibre network operation for Karlstad Stadsn=E4t. "She mostly used it to dry her laundry," he told The Local. "It was a big bit of gear and it got pretty warm." Sigbritt's son, Swedish internet legend Peter L=F6thberg, was behind the project, which was intended to demonstrate how a low price, high capacity fibre line could be built over long distances. L=F6thberg has now taken the equipment up to Lule=E5, in the north of Sweden, for further testing. "The project was a huge success," said Hafsteinn Jonsson, who explained that his department now measures its history in terms of 'Before Sigbritt and After Sigbritt'. "Apart from the death of Ingmar Bergman, this was the biggest story to come out of Sweden in 2007. We used to get all these detailed questions about what we're working on - now we just mention Sigbritt and everybody understands." The secret behind the ultra-fast connection is a new modulation technique which allows data to be transferred directly between two routers up to 2,000 kilometres apart, with no intermediary transponders. According to Karlstad Stadsn=E4t the distance is, in theory, unlimited - there is no data loss as long as the fibre is in place. Sigbritt may have been denied her world-beating internet link but she still has an admirable 10 gigabits per second connection. And there may be another surprise in store for her. "We're considering giving her a 100 gigabits per second connection in the summer," said Hafsteinn Jonsson. "Then she'll be able to dry all her neighbours' laundry too." The Local (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518) -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:26 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cygnus.listbox.com (cygnus.listbox.com [208.72.237.5]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYN007M8USROK@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:14:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C0C3A7 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:15:44 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 113207000CA for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:49:17 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.225]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 664577000C2 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:49:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.225]) with mapi; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:49:08 -0700 Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:48:54 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] PK release on new IP bill To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EA4@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: PK release on new IP bill Thread-Index: AQHIlCkP9fEnAKC/w0u5cXH+PTtKEg== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 50A934FE-001C-11DD-BD77-0286057AF5B5 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Paul Levy [plevy@citizen.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 1:46 PM To: David Farber Subject: PK release on new IP bill I got this alarming release from Public Knowledge..... Paul Alan Levy Public Citizen Litigation Group 1600 - 20th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 588-1000 http://www.citizen.org/litigation >>> abrodsky@publicknowledge.org 4/1/2008 10:47 AM >>> This went out a little while ago: Contact: Art Brodsky 202-518-0020 (o) 301-908-7715 (c) abrodsky@publicknowledge.org For immediate release April 1, 2008 Public Knowledge Slams New Intellectual Property Legislation The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge: =93Earlier today, we were made aware of a new piece of intellectual property legislation, S. 4108. This bill is a tragedy wrapped in a travesty. It is also a travesty wrapped in a tragedy. =93Under this bill, new government agencies, including a Department of Intellectual Property Security, would be created and given extraordinary powers. Copyright protection would be extended to new types of works and with even longer terms of protection in force. In particular, the fashion industry will say, =91Bravo=92 to this bill. New software schemes would be mandated and new powers would be granted to private industry. Rights of the public would be curtailed drastically indefinitely, forever. =93Anyone would have to be a fool to vote for this bill.=94 The full text of the bill is here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/pdf/110-s4108-20080401.pdf ________________________________________ Public Knowledge is a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group working to defend citizens=92 rights in the emerging digital culture. More information available is available at: http://www.publicknowledge.org -- Art Brodsky Communications Director Public Knowledge (202) 518-0020 ext 103 (o) (301) 908-7715 (c) 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Suite 650 Washington, D.C. 20009 www.publicknowledge.org _______________________________________________ LawfulUse mailing list LawfulUse@lists.publicknowledge.org http://lists.publicknowledge.org/mailman/listinfo/lawfuluse -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:27 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from chiclet.listbox.com (chiclet.pobox.com [208.210.124.77]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYO00I0Y38ZNO@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:17:23 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A827D1A68C3 for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:18:38 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4DCDD9C for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:01:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.163]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF9B49F for ; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:00:42 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.163]) with mapi; Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:00:41 -0700 Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:00:24 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] : the truth behind the joke To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EA6@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: : the truth behind the joke Thread-Index: AQHIlEPRAKksuFiVJECJY8a0nt7ElQ== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 14BEFD28-0037-11DD-8130-9B2757A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Art Brodsky [abrodsky@publicknowledge.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:39 PM To: David Farber Subject: the truth behind the joke Dave, I hope some of the IPers read the bill we sent around earlier, S. 4108, the= new IP bill. Some realized it was an April Fool's exercise. What was very serious, however, is that in the midst of the absurdity, ther= e was real language proposed by the content industry. The fact that people= couldn't tell the difference is very telling. Sherwin Siy, who wrote the bill, has a blog post with the background: http= ://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1495 Art -- Art Brodsky Communications Director Public Knowledge (202) 518-0020 ext 103 (o) (301) 908-7715 (c) 1875 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Suite 650 Washington, D.C. 20009 www.publicknowledge.org -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:28 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00O2K2EQIO@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:56:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 218FAA46F for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:58:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DEB69C for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:18:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.225]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D8A6CAB for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:18:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.225]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:18:12 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:17:54 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Bruce Sterling interview in Knowledge Ecology Studies To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EAB@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Bruce Sterling interview in Knowledge Ecology Studies Thread-Index: AQHIlKrXccyINhj6vk6/kouG8CGsrw== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 1CB3E1A8-009E-11DD-8C0B-B1DB56A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: James Love [james.love@keionline.org] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:01 PM To: David Farber Subject: Bruce Sterling interview in Knowledge Ecology Studies http://www.kestudies.org/ Knowledge Ecology Studies, Vol 2 (2008) Cite as: "Life, the Internet, and Everything: An Interview with Bruce Sterling," KEStudies, Vol. 2 (2008). Life, the Internet and Everything: An Interview with Bruce Sterling Bruce Sterling is a prolific and versatile visionary, writer and polemicist. Twice a winner of the prestigious Hugo Award for Science Fiction, and the inspiration for the Dead Media Project, the Viridian Design Movement and many other ideas and projects, Sterling is an original, entertaining and influential observer and reporter of the knowledge ecology. In March 2008, KES interviewed Mr. Sterling. KES: Your books and articles explore, among many things, technology and politics, and we are naturally interested in the relationship between the two. But we are also intrigued by other areas you have explored, including the relationship between technology and religion, or technology and the family. Our first question concerns religion and technology. How do you see the Internet changing religions? Bruce Sterling: Well, we haven't seen an "Internet religion" yet in the manner that "televangelism" was so innovative in the 1980s. I like to think that this is because Internet users are more sophisticated than TV consumers, but I doubt it. I question whether the Net will change anyone's theological convictions, but it does empower diasporas rather drastically. Presumably this means that we will end up with a "flat world" with big fruitcake lumps of zealots in it. Mosques in the Arctic, Christian fundamentalists in western China, Omaha Buddhists, that sort of thing. It'll be interesting to see if we get geolocative, Google-mapped super-churches that can out-draw small neighborhood churches -- the Wal-Mart Big Box Store model of American Christianity. Long Tail theory would predict that tiny cults will thrive. If you're the world's last five Zoroastrians, at least you can friend each other on MySpace. KES: The term intellectual property rights is used to describe a host of rights, privileges and ownership claims on creativity, invention and investments in knowledge. There is lobbying by corporate interests to expand and enforce these claims, and a social movement to scale them back. There are also attempts to replace systems of exclusive rights with other rewards, such as the use of cash prizes for successful drug developers, or systems of remunerating authors and performers for work that are freely copied and shared on the Internet -- in short, to separate the reward to the creative communities from the control over access to the work or invention. How do you see this debate playing out? Bruce Sterling: I see it as long, ugly, and increasingly criminal and/or coercive. Nothing that's framed as "corporate interests" versus "social movements" will ever be resolved. That may have been a proper description twenty years ago, but nowadays it's mayhem: RIAA and MPAA vigilantes, rootkits, organized pirates, P2P networks, all kinds of secretive barbed-wire smuggled into the hardware=85it's become sinister. The major players, the change drivers that are really shaping that landscape, are antisocial and outside the law. We're getting the kind of property rights regime that we deserve: it looks like Somalia, like Baghdad, like the pirate factories of Shenzhen; it's conspiratorial and cruel. IP law enforcement looks like Guantanamo; the majesty of the law is in tatters. Yet people still imagine there's some kind of cool hacker handwave here -- like the US Supreme Court can fix it all with a court case. That's like imagining that heroin leaves Afghanistan because, you know, the Koran likely doesn't approve of that. I heard a refugee say recently that chaos is the worst kind of oppression because there is nothing to resist. It's not a matter of, say, heroic freeware resistance to corporate oppression anymore. I think if these two supposedly potent groups sat down at a conference table and worked these IP issues out in all good will, they'd have a very steep climb just rebuilding the IP structures that have been methodically wrecked since the '80s. They should both both staring aghast at Moore's Law, at the Chris Anderson "drive toward free," at the amount of digital "property" that's just plain outmoded and useless -- everything on HD-DVD, for instance -- at IP that is vanishing because rights are too complex to track, at global criminality, at new forms of "managed democracy" and new kinds of Internet firewalls...At massive drone-bot networks run by organized crime that are the new ISPs for black globalization... It's like they're living in a G-7 dream-world. They think it's about the "debate." It's about the fait accompli, fellas. And both of you, Davos corporate and Porto Alegre social, are not the ones whose accomplishments are mattering. KES: We would like to focus a bit on the last part of the previous question, concerning efforts to "separate the reward to the creative communities from the control over access to the work or invention." You seem to be expressing deep skepticism over the current intellectual property regime being realistic or sustainable, particularly with regard to digital works. Bruce Sterling: The "creative communities"? Nobody rewards the "creative communities," unless you're referring to the Soviet Writers Union. Rewards for creativity tend to have a power-law distribution -- a few wealthy stars and a horde of cranky zealots. KES: But isn't the core of the problem related to the large divergence between the cost of copying a work and the value associated with access to the work? Bruce Sterling: Cory Doctorow would likely argue that it's about the accelerating cost divergence -- from a fraction of a cent for a song to a fraction of a cent for a million songs. KES: Does that difference in part create incentives for illegal and even antisocial actions? Bruce Sterling: Well, of course it creates incentives, but it also destroys them; P2P networks have pretty much put the plasticware pirates right out of business. KES: And, along this same line of thought, wouldn't a reward that is independent of the power to control making a copy be a way forward? To make this more concrete, a sixteen year-old child can easily copy 32 gigabytes of recorded music for a friend in a few minutes. A $30 copy of scholarly research from Nature can easily be distributed on a listserve or web page. In the area of medicine, it is possible to manufacture a $4 heart disease drug for less than 1 cent. The active ingredients for a $100,000 cancer drug can be manufactured for less than $1. The legal and technical efforts to stop the copying or distribution of inexpensive copies of such goods are both challenging, and to the degree that they work, raise concerns regarding privacy, access, and the control of information. But if the rewards to creative and inventive communities are not linked to the monopoly or control over the copying of the work or invention, and instead provide a business model to reward products based upon use (such as S.2210, the Medical Innovation Prize Fund, or various proposals for remunerating authors and performers for works shared on peer-to-peer networks), is it possible to invest less (financially, politically and emotionally) in the war to enforce exclusive rights? Bruce Sterling: Well, that has a certain surface plausibility, but so did dongles and Sony Betamax. You tend to get the rewards that you incentivize, so I'd be guessing that the primary output of this system is sucking up to lucrative awards committees. Why don't I just lobby them to declare my me-too cold medicine to be the greatest thing since penicillin? We can make the "creative communities" the same insider cabal as the almighty "reward-distribution communities" and then we don't have to lift a finger. This proposal is rather familiar to me from literary work in languages other than English. They don't have much market-clout, since the audience is small, so the culture-minister invents a coterie of nationalist literateurs and rewards them with prizes and tenure. People wonder why these ultranational books aren't real popular. That's because they don't need any truck with a mass audience of anybody outside the state's borders. Culture apparatchiks aren't entertainers. Still, these systems do persist because the alternative would be complete collapse with nothing published in Danish or Slovenian at all. I'm not an expert on medical policy, but I'd be guessing that the "orphan drug" problem has a lot of parallels here. KES: The various "alternative reward" proposals recently proposed tend to be very closely tied to the particular problem they are trying to solve. In the area of recorded music shared through peer-to-peer networks, the most common and conventional proposal is to freely allow file sharing in return for money (the amount is almost an afterthought to some, but quite important to others) to be distributed to authors and recording artists, on the basis of estimated downloads - not unlike the way some northern European governments remunerate publishers for the copying of scholarly works at universities. A lot of people think this would work for recorded music, but they are less confident it would work for other types of copyright-protected works, like literature, or movies. Suppose you were told that novels and movies would no longer have effective protection from peer-to-peer file sharing, and Bruce Sterling was asked to design the system of alternative rewards? How would you respond? Bruce Sterling: I'd optimize my system for the preservation and distribution of creative works beyond the lifespan of the author. Since most people are dead, most really good works are by dead people. A system that doesn't incentivize this is failing the arts. I'd say ten years, then pop that creative work into the public domain. If it somehow still continues to sell, give the creator some kind of life-support stipend and a prestige reward, like, say, a knighthood with a medal and a ribbon he or she can wear in public. Most movie directors wear themselves out trying to raise money for movies and end up starting vineyards or something to launder the cash-spike from their hits. That always seemed like a lame system to me; if you make a hundred million dollars, have the state divvy it up into five twenty-million dollar, tax-free chunks and guarantee the director the right to make five movies even if four of them bomb. Also, artists need health care. Everybody does, but artists tend to be afflicted and bipolar, so they need more than others. The occasional trip to the dry-out clinic ought to be considered a normal operating cost of the creative industries. KES: A different approach, proposed by a group of artists in workshops in New York and Banff, would have individuals pay money to competing intermediaries, which would distribute money to artists, in whichever manner that the consumers thought worked the best. This was in part designed to address the power-law distribution issue you raised earlier (then called the Britney effect), but also to allow for much more freedom in terms of how the public might want to support art. For example, in the area of music, some listeners might want to reward the backup musicians or artists whose works were covered by the more famous artists. And, at least in theory, consumers could avoid intermediaries that were brain-dead or corrupt. Would consumers do a better or worse job than publishers and conventional collection societies in rewarding artists? Bruce Sterling: I dunno. You've left the critics and the intelligentsia out of the equation here. This system is great for Dickens and Harry Potter and doom for J.G. Ballard and Franz Kafka. How do we establish a canon of the classics? Moby Dick wasn't recognized as a major work until the 1920s. Also, how do I get my hands on a copy of the poems of Emily Dickinson here? She's dead, so she can't be "rewarded," and she doesn't have a vast eager crowd of "consumers." Writers in minority languages also get shortchanged here. KES: In recent years there has been a vast expansion of access to knowledge, in nearly every area. Normally, this is thought of as a positive development, but there are exceptions, such as losses of privacy, or the proliferation of know-how to make weapons. How serious are the risks that we will know too much? Bruce Sterling: I'm unconvinced that access to data equates to "knowledge." I wouldn't go so far as to claim that we suffer from a cult of the amateur, but, thanks to search engines, this is the golden age of the dilettante. It's easy to imagine that we know more than we do. Diplomats, scientists, foreign correspondents, television stringers, they all complain that their enterprises are in sharp decline, that we have an irrational Internet echo chamber instead of original investigation by trained professionals. Having lived in Serbia, where even Serbians clearly don't know what's going on, I'm inclined to put some credence in this. There are failed states all over the planet, and vast slums and shanty-towns in which things of great consequence are going on about which the Internet knows practically nothing. I also worry about the academy complaining that electronic sources of knowledge are inherently fragile, unfixed and unstable. We may have vast digital knowledge, but we have no archival method of storing digital information that is stable in the long term. This is risky. One would think that bankers would be well advised to know where their money is, but the rise of sophisticated financial instruments has made the markets more opaque, not better known. We can multiply complexity much faster than we can increase our understanding of the consequences. This is seriously risky. Public exposure of private sexual behavior is radically politically destabilizing. Lower barriers-to-entry for the spreading of political gossip have made slander and tittle-tattle impossible to control. The USA has never recovered from the huge damage done during the Clinton impeachment, and former Governor Spitzer is now ruing the day that he made banking investigations and wiretapping of prostitution rings so easy for his colleagues in law enforcement. Why do we know such prurient things? How can we stop ourselves from knowing them, even if we want to? KES: The Internet has been described by some as new type of library, with much of the content available freely to everyone who can connect. The rise of organized communities on the Internet, and the availability of increasingly useful audiovisual services being delivered over the Internet, raises questions about the future of universities. How do you see the role of elite universities in a world where lectures can be delivered over the Internet, and students can form their own networks to discuss topics? Bruce Sterling: Well, I'd believe that the Internet was a "new type of library" when somebody showed me a library riddled with every booming variety of piracy, porn, fraud, spam and organized crime. There "might" be a library somewhere half as freakishly disordered as the Internet -- I'm guessing the mortar-blasted halls of Mogadishu Technical University. The role of elite universities isn't just to give kids access to knowledge and data; their role is to produce elites. People don't go to college in order to get an ISO certification; they go there to network with their own generation -- to get married, even. A modern society without universities would be very unstable and socially alien. If we produce an elite class of genius autodidacts who are entirely self-educated on the Internet and who have never been socialized, then elite universities are in for it. Yet practically every institution in human society would be turned upside-down by a revolution that deep; we'd have no colleges, no schools of any kind. Shortly after that, no professions. Everybody would be their own Buckminster Fuller. All that was solid would melt into air. The Internet surely has aspects that are like a "library," but it's also called a "superhighway," a "cyberspace," a "net," a "grid," a "cloud" -- the military thinks it's a battlespace, politicians think it's a campaign stop, entertainers think it's a theater, merchants think it's a mall. Academics think it's an academy, with a little more historical justice than those other johnny-come-latelies. But it isn't an academy substitute, any more than digital targeting is a substitute for boots on the ground. The Internet's "library" aspect isn't "new" -- it is old. I kinda doubt that "the Internet" can remain the Internet much longer. The word "Internet" is a metaphor. It used to mean "systems linked by TCP/IP" but even that technical definition doesn't hold any more. Nowadays we've got linked cellphones saturating the planet so thoroughly that they're owned by people who can't even read. "The Internet" isn't stable enough to replace stable institutions -- if you think it's a library, have you tried using "archie" lately? Universities are still growing ivy while there are vast chunks of yesterday's Internet already deader than Hammurabi. If you think "the Internet" is tomorrow's institution, you are hitching your wagon to a cloud. KES: The term "the Internet" does cover a lot of ground, and yes, there is plenty of both beautiful and disturbing activity. To the degree that libraries of works, or information about those works, are available in digital formats, it changes the audiences for those works, including less elite and less resourced populations. The Internet is full of tensions between cultures of abundance and access, and those of scarcity and exclusion. So too between small-scale, decentralized organizations and communities, and huge brands that enjoy enormous market shares. One feature of "elite" universities today is the fact that access to the institutions is quite limited. That may have all sorts of the consequences that you refer to, such as providing a mechanism for a social class preserving arranged marriages, and other reasons why the leadership of elite institutions may prefer a variety of exclusionary policies. But as the audiovisual, interactive and collaborative tools improve on the Internet, the possibility of much broader access to lectures and learning experiences grows. It is not obvious how this plays out. Does Harvard leverage it's "brand" and become a leading global supplier of learning, culture and socialization to a much wider global population? Bruce Sterling: I don't expect Harvard to vaporize, and I'm betting its distinguished alums would be a tad distressed to see the alma mater construed as a "brand" and a "global supplier" of anything. When you graduate from Harvard, you want to be able to tell people that you've done time at Harvard, not that you were socialized over the Internet in an ever-expanding digital learning culture. Where's the cachet? Where's the posh Harvard accent? Where's the varsity sweater? And where is your valuable network of fellow classmates? KES: Do talented and famous faculty hire agents and negotiate with competing aggregators of courses? One might well see a glut of "faculty" seeking the safety of an academic career if creatives go poorly compensated under that panoply of post-IP schemes we were describing earlier. I myself have been known to teach, and Lord knows I never planned that. Universities aren't keenly rationalized toward maximum commercial productivity. They're supposed to be providing some rounding, polishing and broadening to the dewy and naive. They're not intellectual labor-camps. KES: Will legal and illegal access movements make it difficult to monetize and ration learning? Bruce Sterling: I doubt that the stuff that's monetized and rationed at colleges and universities is "learning." Besides, the traditional role of the academy is to see to it that society's highly-learned are NOT monetized, so that one can enjoy, say, professors of ancient Assyrian and string theorists. Not "commercial." "Academic." You have academies so you can have academic things. Of course, one can claim that these worthless longhairs ought to be scrubbed from the system because there's no immediate cash IP payoff; some of these guys are even annoying fanatics who try to FORCE people to have some "access" to their academic learning. They'll even pay to get published. A difficult theoretical matter there -- "intellectual property" that's literally worse than useless! Perhaps it should all be burned! KES: Do the elite institutions retain their traditional roles, much the same way that live performances of string quartets and operas have endured for affluent audiences? Bruce Sterling: I'm not sure that the class argument you seem to be making here advances the debate much. Universities are a lot older than Marx. Their "traditional role" includes the extremely useful aspect of getting troublesome young people out of their parents' homes. Where does this handy function go in a flat world where we're all in dull, gray Internet correspondence courses? A generation of students in a school is like an army encampment, with specialized buildings, food, housing... bars, nightclubs, retail outlets...Would it make sense to claim that an army is "like a string quartet or an opera" for affluent audiences? Obviously the affluent do have armies (because they're expensive), but re-casting armies as "global violence providers" while spreading military knowledge via a website is problematic. That's possible, of course -- because that's what Al Qaeda does -- but a vaporous, widely-distributed entity like Al Qaeda has a hard time governing. An army is supposed to be the sinew of the nation-state; scattered global guerrillas are highly destabilizing and create failed states. An education system that doesn't civilize is like an army that doesn't bring order. A college is supposed to civilize the young. If you remove those functions merely in order to pump ones and zeros at student eyeballs, you are going to lose a lot of valuable cultural capital. An educated citizen is not a friction-free technocratic philistine myrmidon with an ISO rating. Those guys exist, don't get me wrong, but they bear the relationship to education that the Ron Paul campaign had to political reality. KES: Our final question concerns global warming, a topic you explore in part though the Viridian Design Movement. What is the role of the artist in changing the trend? Bruce Sterling: Well, one would naturally think that the artist's role is as the avant-garde of early warning. But once society's in a climate crisis -- and we're in one -- the proper role of an artist will change. Not so much those bleak prognostications -- too obvious to anybody -- as the need to give wounded people a reason to live. A society in crisis needs to be told about ways out of that crisis, not about the gravity of their situation. So the artists who are worth anything in a climate crisis won't be subversive critics. They'll be morale boosters. That's a role that's quite alien to my own mordant temperament, which is why I stopped agitating in Viridian Design Movement. It's just done; it's over. In a rather similar way, I don't talk very much about "cyberpunk" any more -- we now have a world of cyberfinanciers, cybergenerals, cyberpoliticians -- to blither on about the shattering impact of cyberness in 2008 is overkill. When the trend's changed, you need to know when to stop. The role of an artist isn't always to be an artist. They say that those who worship the Muses end up running the Museums. Similarly, all futurists are doomed to become historians. The avant-garde becomes the gray eminences...As a culturatus, you can change a trend, but you're also part of the trend. People become the trend they want to see. People are historical figures, they personify the passage of time. I'm still a creative artist, but when adults half my age call me a "guru" nowadays, they're not kidding about it. They don't see some capering 1980s radical literary agitator, they see a gray-haired, professorial character, someone with a track record. When I was young I tried hard to rally other young people. I'm not young now, but I seek out my students because I learn from them. I try to give them useful access to tools and ideas. I try not to impose my own dated notions on them. I don't scold them for differing from my dated expectations; I'm not judgmental or dogmatic. I like to think that I help them, so maybe I do shape future trends a bit in that vicarious way; but I don't do it for their sake. I'm doing it for the sake of other artists, many dead now and very dated figures who generously helped me when I myself was young. No one fully master a trend because no one can outguess futurity or physically defeat the passage of time. Still, you can win a moral victory over time by paying a moral debt forward. And lo, an artists' debts to his forebears are many indeed. If an artist doesn't know that, he may be very trendy, but he's not much of an artist. -- _____________________________ James Love, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) http://www.keionline.org, mailto:james.love@keionline.org voice +1.202.332.2670, fax +1.202.332.2673, US mobile +1.202.361.3040, Geneva mobile +41.76.413.6584 When everyone thinks the same, no one thinks. Bill Walton remix of Walter Lippmann -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:30 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00O8H2THIO@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:05:41 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 263FCA469 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:06:58 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17BA55F for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:29:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.225]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6207268 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:29:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-4.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.225]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:28:41 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 03:28:28 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] New white paper: Trust in Email Begins with Authentication To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EAD@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: New white paper: Trust in Email Begins with Authentication Thread-Index: AQHIlKxQvEnQaGfflkqEUsSck4RTiA== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: A0D03ECC-009F-11DD-B534-59CA189CFB26 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Dave Crocker [dcrocker@bbiw.net] Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 5:35 PM To: David Farber; ip Subject: New white paper: Trust in Email Begins with Authentication Dave, For IP -- The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has just issued a white pape= r, titled: "Trust in Email Begins with Authentication" I was editor for the paper. From the press release for the paper: "Setting the stage for a better understanding of sender authenticatio= n as a technology to combat junk email... [the paper focuses] on the standardized mechanisms in general use today, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Sender IDentification Framework (SenderID), and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). "[one-page] summary of the MAAWG paper provides an overview of how authentication can be used to protect email and is intended for general bus= iness managers. The main body provides more detail on SPF, SenderID, and DKIM mechanisms and is intended for technical readers familiar with basic Intern= et mail service." Note that the executive summary can be used standalone, for management and = other non-technical introductions to the topic of authentication in aid of email anti-abuse. A copy of the paper is at: The full press release for it is at: d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:31 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from cygnus.listbox.com (cygnus.listbox.com [208.72.237.5]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00H658E5I6@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:06:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E55E998 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:07:01 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7ADEB1A6DB6 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:41:12 -0400 (EDT) Received: from chokecherry.srv.cs.cmu.edu (CHOKECHERRY.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.185.41]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2681E1A6C75 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:40:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.0.1.200] (c-71-206-247-106.hsd1.pa.comcast.net [71.206.247.106]) (authenticated bits=0) by chokecherry.srv.cs.cmu.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m32CeSqU006363 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:40:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 08:40:28 -0400 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Comcast HD Quality Reduction: Details, Screenshots - AVS Forum To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v919.2) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2) Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-524--947921946 X-Listbox-UUID: 0BC365B2-00B2-11DD-88A8-B416BBF991BD X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 --Apple-Mail-524--947921946 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1008271 Comcast HD Quality Reduction: Details, Screenshots Last updated: March 24, 2008 Until recently, most Comcast systems passed all HD as is from the content provider, without any added compression or quality reduction. In response to competitive pressures from DirecTV and Verizon FiOS, Comcast recently decided to sacrifice some quality to improve quantity. By early April, most Comcast systems will recompress and degrade their HD, much like DirecTV and Dish Network do on their MPEG-2 channels. This creates room for new HD channels without the need to eliminate a significant number of analog channels. Previously, Comcast allocated a maximum of two HD channels per 38.8Mbps QAM, so each channel had the full 19.4Mbps available if needed. Now, with the addition of new channels, Comcast is squeezing three HD channels into each 38.8Mbps QAM. Furthermore, some existing QAMs with two HD channels are being recompressed in preparation for new channel additions. But what does that mean? How much difference is there, really? To find out, I decided to compare the quality of the same programs on Comcast and Verizon FiOS. I recorded the same program from the same channel, at the same time, on both Comcast and Verizon FiOS in N. VA. I compared the size and bitrate of each MPEG-2 recording, as well as the subjective quality with video. Note when I tested channels late last year, there were no differences between the two providers on HD. Any differences are new. picts etc follows djf ------------------------------------------- --Apple-Mail-524--947921946 Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre= ad.php?t=3D1008271

=
Comcast HD Quality Reduction: Details, Scr= eenshots
Last updated: March 24,= 2008

Until recently, most Comcast systems passed all HD as i= s from the content provider, without any added compression or quality reduc= tion. In response to competitive pressures from DirecTV and Verizon FiOS, C= omcast recently decided to sacrifice some quality to improve quantity. By e= arly April, most Comcast systems will recompress and degrade their HD, much= like DirecTV and Dish Network do on their MPEG-2 channels. This creates ro= om for new HD channels without the need to eliminate a significant number o= f analog channels.

Previously, Comcast allocated a maximum of two HD= channels per 38.8Mbps QAM, so each channel had the full 19.4Mbps available= if needed. Now, with the addition of new channels, Comcast is squeezing th= ree HD channels into each 38.8Mbps QAM. Furthermore, some existing QAMs wit= h two HD channels are being recompressed in preparation for new channel add= itions.

But what does that mean? How much difference is there, reall= y?

To find out, I decided to compare the quality of the same program= s on Comcast and Verizon FiOS. I recorded the same program = ;from the same channel, at the same time, on both C= omcast and Verizon FiOS in N. VA. I compared the size and bitrate of each M= PEG-2 recording, as well as the subjective quality with video.

Note = when I tested channels late last year, there were no differences between th= e two providers on HD. Any differences are new.

picts etc follo= ws djf 
= --Apple-Mail-524--947921946--   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:32 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00HOKAQIIH@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:56:42 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 625BAA509 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:58:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66C62A544 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:17:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.226]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F78BA537 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:17:02 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.226]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:16:39 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 06:16:26 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EAF@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlMPHtNEZCc09GkCQFKyOkV1HJQ== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 190B5AFE-00B7-11DD-8C8A-E88166D9244B X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Andrew C Burnette [acb@acb.net] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 9:02 AM To: David Farber Subject: Credit Default Swaps Dave, for IP if you wish. Credit Default Swaps Heard an interesting broadcast on Marketplace (a PRI radio program; April 1, 2008) on the issue of Credit Default Swaps. Interesting aspect is that nearly 45T USD of these are "in play" in the market. According to the discussion, The Bear Sterns buyout may have been a self saving mechanism for JPmorgan, as the risk of Bear Stern's failure becomes a risk of collapse for the holders of these guarantee certificates. Perhaps JP Morgan saw a risk exposure due to their own trades with Bear Sterns. Very interesting financial instrument, intended to spread risk around ("probably the most important instrument in finance," according to former Fed chair Alan Greenspan), however, when many begin to suffer, there's little assurance that any of the other holders of these swaps may be actually able to back up a default. From the program transcript: The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion. The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion. The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion. OK, you ready? The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/01/credit_default_sw= aps_q/ -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:33 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from chiclet.listbox.com (chiclet.pobox.com [208.210.124.77]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00HRDKJRRL@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:28:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F44B1A6E04 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:29:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C147A6 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:10:55 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.226]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A0CC4B4 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:10:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.226]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:10:39 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:08:02 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Re: Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EB3@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Re: Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlOR22RfNab4p80mvpMlaYAbOjA== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: BB122088-00D7-11DD-B495-DD2657A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: hal@halstucker.com [hal@halstucker.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 12:57 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Credit Default Swaps Dear Prof. Farber: An interesting instrument indeed. It's not very clear how much exposure JPM= organ would have had directly to a Bear Stearns bankruptcy, as JPMorgan was= , I believe, also writing its own CDS. It seems more a matter of how much a= Bear Stearns meltdown would have affected the market overall. My understan= ding is that Bear had a portfolio of approximately USD 30bn in credit defau= lt swaps, both as a buyer and seller of these instruments, meaning they wou= ld have either owed premiums to a seller if they were buyers of the CDS con= tract, or would be liable for payout in case of a default, if they were the= sellers. The Fed apparently stepped in because it feared the repercussions= of a $30 billion blowout on the overall market and promised to backstop an= y losses a buyer of Bear Stearns might incur up to the $30 billion. I work = as an editor for a subsidiary of the Financial Times and one of our reporte= rs had a source tell her that, while JPMorgan's party line was that they we= re only offering $2 per share because they had no time to do proper due dil= igence, the real reason for the low, low share price they offerd was the CD= S time bomb in Bear's portfolio. While this is scary enough, what is truly frightening is the way these inst= ruments have been traded with virtually no oversight over the last decade. = Warren Buffet, God love him, quite famously called credit derivatives "fina= ncial weapons of mass destruction." CDS seems to have been bought and sold = by individuals who had very little understanding of what they were buying a= nd how they worked and, well, we're now seeing the results. They were essen= tially designed as a kind of insurance policy that could be purchased to co= ver bond risk, i.e., I buy $50m in bonds and I also buy a CDS contract that= will pay me the face value if my bonds default. Sounds simple enough, righ= t? Because these instruments are unregulated, however, they've become belov= ed of speculators betting for or against a company's creditworthiness. Wiki= pedia has a very good page on CDS, which provides an excellent overview of = the both the workings and the insane complexity of these things. The page p= oints out that the amount of CDS written on a bond issue may eventually dwa= rf the actual value of the bonds. So if a $1bn bond issue defaults, with cr= editors ultimately perhaps receiving $.40 on the dollar in a settlement, th= ere may be $10bn worth of CDS outstanding, which means someone is on the ho= ok for $6bn. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap Sounding a bit like the savings and loan meltdown of the late 1980s? There = are a lot of similarities - where S&Ls were freed by the Garn St. Germain a= ct to invest in all kinds of risky deals the S&L bankers didn't understand,= here bankers at commercial and investment banks, trying to compete with th= e returns investors were getting (or thought they were getting) from hedge = funds, apparently turned to all sorts of risky deals they only kinda, sorta= understood. And there are more flavors of derivatives out there than anyon= e can keep track of. Ever hear of liquidity puts? According to the New York= Times, neither had Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary and now a senio= r executive at Citigroup. Comforting, isn't it? Part of the market woes we'= re now experiencing seem to come as much from sheer panic as from any actua= l losses, though those have been substantial. The subtext of much of this s= eems to be, "Okay, we drank the subprime Koolaid, and maybe that won't kill= us. But we drank so many other flavors of Koolaid as well....." I know it's cliche, but who better to quote than that oft-quoted economic s= age Yogi Berra - "This is like deja vu all over again." For the fourth (or = is it the fifth) time in my middle-aged life. -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net] Sent: Wednesday, April 2, 2008 09:16 AM To: 'ip' Subject: [IP] Credit Default Swaps ________________________________________ From: Andrew C Burnette [acb@acb.n= et] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 9:02 AM To: David Farber Subject: Credi= t Default Swaps Dave, for IP if you wish. Credit Default Swaps Heard an int= eresting broadcast on Marketplace (a PRI radio program; April 1, 2008) on t= he issue of Credit Default Swaps. Interesting aspect is that nearly 45T USD= of these are "in play" in the market. According to the discussion, The Bea= r Sterns buyout may have been a self saving mechanism for JPmorgan, as the = risk of Bear Stern's failure becomes a risk of collapse for the holders of = these guarantee certificates. Perhaps JP Morgan saw a risk exposure due to = their own trades with Bear Sterns. Very interesting financial instrument, i= ntended to spread risk around ("probably the most important instrument in f= inance," according to former Fed chair Alan Greenspan), however, when many = begin to suffer, there's little assurance that any of the other holders of = these swaps may be actually able to back up a default. From the program tra= nscript: The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion. The= value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion. The size of the U.S. sto= ck market: $22 trillion. OK, you ready? The size of the credit default swap= market last year: $45 trillion. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display= /web/2008/04/01/credit_default_swaps_q/ -----------------------------------= //www.listbox.com -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:34 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from orion.listbox.com (orion.listbox.com [207.106.133.18]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00A7QN54L9@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:24:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1B5FA7000FC for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:25:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7107A46F for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:17:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.164]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBB9BA528 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:17:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.164]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:17:13 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:16:53 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] good question Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EB6@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: good question Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlO3EHiGlbuLqVUWotziTNtqw0w== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: 14D37B2C-00E1-11DD-B959-E45266D9244B X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Erik Cecil [erik.cecil@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 1:13 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Credit Default Swaps Dave, I for one, am not terribly sophisticated on these issues. I assume there a= re others in the same boat. So while I don't know if this is a question fo= r the list, it's possible that others may be wondering how this sort of ana= lysis is no different than adding up the value of all bets placed on the Su= perbowl and claiming that after the event, millions of dollars (i.e. at lea= st twice the value of the money actually exchanged b/c you're counting both= sides of the transaction) were bet & no one really knows how much was "los= t" (i.e. some are straight bi-lateral bets, others placed with odds-makers = / bookies, some legal transactions, some not, etc.). If that's correct, then isn't it true in an ultimate sense that only some p= ortion of the $45 trillion really matters to the economy? IOW, how can you bet more than twice the amount of money than there exists = in the entire U.S. economy? Would it be accurate to look at this as the m= other of all ponsi schemes such that lots of individual bottom lines may be= affected but the money, in and of itself, didn't go away? Rather, it mean= s that that the last one to receive cash wins? The rest "lose" money, but= relative to the entire economy, again, money just moved around? Is there = also potential, over the longer term, that individuals and businesses can a= lso use those "losses" to offset taxes? By asking these questions, I'm not taking any position at all; I simply att= empting to grasp what it means when someone says $45 trillion is in play, b= ut the U.S. economy =3D $22 trillion. With every best wish, Erik Cecil On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:16 AM, David Farber > wrote: ________________________________________ From: Andrew C Burnette [acb@acb.net] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 9:02 AM To: David Farber Subject: Credit Default Swaps Dave, for IP if you wish. Credit Default Swaps Heard an interesting broadcast on Marketplace (a PRI radio program; April 1, 2008) on the issue of Credit Default Swaps. Interesting aspect is that nearly 45T USD of these are "in play" in the market. According to the discussion, The Bear Sterns buyout may have been a self saving mechanism for JPmorgan, as the risk of Bear Stern's failure becomes a risk of collapse for the holders of these guarantee certificates. Perhaps JP Morgan saw a risk exposure due to their own trades with Bear Sterns. Very interesting financial instrument, intended to spread risk around ("probably the most important instrument in finance," according to former Fed chair Alan Greenspan), however, when many begin to suffer, there's little assurance that any of the other holders of these swaps may be actually able to back up a default. From the program transcript: The value of the entire U.S. Treasuries market: $4.5 trillion. The value of the entire mortgage market: $7 trillion. The size of the U.S. stock market: $22 trillion. OK, you ready? The size of the credit default swap market last year: $45 trillion. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/04/01/credit_default_sw= aps_q/ ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:35 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from orion.listbox.com (orion.listbox.com [207.106.133.18]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYP00FAGQP8LG@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:41:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 314407000E9 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:42:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E39F21A7EAC for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:55 -0400 (EDT) Received: from jackfruit.srv.cs.cmu.edu (JACKFRUIT.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.201.16]) by chiclet.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 98CEE1A7E60 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [10.0.1.200] (c-71-206-247-106.hsd1.pa.comcast.net [71.206.247.106]) (authenticated bits=0) by jackfruit.srv.cs.cmu.edu (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id m32JcDho028314 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:17 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:38:12 -0400 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] USA 2008: The Great Depression To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v919.2) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2) Content-type: text/plain; delsp=yes; format=flowed; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable X-Listbox-UUID: 676B1A92-00EC-11DD-BE88-BC7C1CEB9493 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 References: <79CE39D2-79CD-49C2-AE01-CC1B0655571B@warpspeed.com> List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 Begin forwarded message: From: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks) Date: April 2, 2008 8:15:00 AM EDT To: Dewayne-Net Technology List Subject: [Dewayne-Net] USA 2008: The Great Depression [Note: This item comes from friend Ken DiPietro. DLH] From: ken Date: April 1, 2008 10:16:16 AM PDT To: Dewayne Hendricks Subject: USA 2008: The Great Depression Selected excerpts "Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive =96 a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis. Michigan has been in its own mini-recession for years as its collapsing industrial base, particularly in the car industry, has cast more and more out of work. Now, one in eight residents of the state is on food stamps, double the level in 2000. "We have seen a dramatic increase in recent years, but we have also seen it climbing more in recent months," Maureen Sorbet, a spokeswoman for Michigan's programme, said. "It's been increasing steadily. Without the programme, some families and kids would be going without." But the trend is not restricted to the rust-belt regions. Forty states are reporting increases in applications for the stamps, actually electronic cards that are filled automatically once a month by the government and are swiped by shoppers at the till, in the 12 months from December 2006. At least six states, including Florida, Arizona and Maryland, have had a 10 per cent increase in the past year. In Rhode Island, the segment of the population on food stamps has risen by 18 per cent in two years. The food programme started 40 years ago when hunger was still a daily fact of life for many Americans. The recent switch from paper coupons to the plastic card system has helped remove some of the stigma associated with the food stamp programme. The card can be swiped as easily as a bank debit card. To qualify for the cards, Americans do not have to be exactly on the breadline. The programme is available to people whose earnings are just above the official poverty line. For Hubert Liepnieks, the card is a lifeline he could never afford to lose. Just out of prison, he sleeps in overnight shelters in Manhattan and uses the card at a Morgan Williams supermarket on East 23rd Street. Yesterday, he and his fianc=E9e, Christine Schultz, who is in a wheelchair, shared one banana and a cup of coffee bought with the 82 cents left on it." The entire article can be read here: Tiny URL for those who choose to use it: -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:36 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from orion.listbox.com (orion.listbox.com [207.106.133.18]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYQ006Q44CFIB@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:36:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C27217000D6 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:37:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (ns5.rightbox.com [207.106.133.26]) by orion.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 919897000CA for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:34:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3235A5F for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:35:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.164]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1342563 for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:35:05 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-2.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.164]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:34:42 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:34:07 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EB8@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Re: good question Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlSJ/sHRCOQgbJEaDwd15r+scAg== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: CEEE0250-0115-11DD-8330-FADD189CFB26 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 7:29 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: **please anonymise** good question Credit Default = Swaps Hi Dave, ** please anonymise*** to clarify a bit the discussion around CDS, as I've been working in IT in banks and financial markets, I thought you might find this input interesting I am not a financial expert, but I've been working in banks for a while now, and my understanding of the CDS as instrument is the following A CDS is best understood as an insurance policy. The value of the premium you pay is linked but much much smaller than the amount protected by it and proportional to the risk covered. So as explained in the parent, if I lend USD1M to Mr X. and I want to cover myself against Mr X defaulting, I'll pay Mr Y. a regular sum to make sure that if X. stops paying, Y. pays instead. Where it gets interesting is that you can trade CDS without having the exposure (without having lent money), as a pure speculative product. In that case, when buying, you're essentially betting that the risk of Mr X defaulting (or, more often, the perception of the risk) will increase and that someone will be interested in buying the coverage from you at some point (for a higher price, obviously, as the risk has increased). Being on the sell side works the other way around, thus betting the credit worthiness will decrease. As for most speculative products, this only works in liquid markets (a liquid market is a market on which, if you want to sell or buy at the market price, you'll get a deal rapidly) . If the confidence in these products decreases, the liquidity of the market decrease and holding these instruments can be considered as holding a time bomb as you carry a risk that you haven't really evaluated for itself but rather for its variation (or derivative). For instance, many ABS and MBS (asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities) are now rather illiquid products compared to a few months ago. The credit crunch is often called in the banking industry the liquidity crisis. In terms of evaluating the financial weight of a product class, many different metrics can be used. For instance interest rate swaps can be measured based on the nominal (a fictional amount on which the transaction is based), in which case it is a staggering amount of money, or in terms of actual cash flows, in which case it is much more "decent". Similarly, in CDS, if we consider the amounts covered (especially as the same debt can be covered several times, as the reality of the coverage doesn't matter for speculative trading of these instruments), the figure given may be correct. In terms of real money exchange, though, the amounts are likely to be infinitely smaller. On 2 Apr 2008, at 22:32, David Farber wrote: > > ________________________________________ > From: Rod Van Meter [rdv@sfc.wide.ad.jp] > Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 5:09 PM > To: David Farber; eric.cecil@gmail.com > Cc: ip > Subject: Re: [IP] good question Credit Default Swaps > >> IOW, how can you bet more than twice the amount of money than there >> exists in the entire U.S. economy? >> >> ... I simply attempting to grasp what it means when someone says >> $45 trillion is in play, but the U.S. economy =3D $22 trillion. >> > > I would be the *last* person to know anything serious about markets, > but > I think you've misunderstood something here: the value of the > securities > (the debt on the mortgages, right?) is only $7T, but the amount of > trading of those securities was worth $45T. That is, the average > mortgage traded hands 45/7 =3D ~6.5 times in *one year*. > > So there is not twice the total size of the economy in debt "in play". > This is equivalent to asking the total value of the stocks that get > traded on the stock market in a year. I have no idea what the number > is, but it's a *lot* more than the total sales of all the companies. > > When a mortgage trades hands, obviously that's a financial > transaction; > I have no idea what number is added to the size of the U.S. economy -- > what "value" does that trade have? If it were 100%, then the $22T > total > economy would have to be greater than $45T, right? But nobody could > afford to trade them at that rate. It's probably a small fraction > of a > percent of the value of the loan, or the banks couldn't afford to > trade > them seven times a year. > > We're wandering a little far from IP's primary mission, but I'm > curious > what fraction of the total economy is "paper trading" of securities, > consulting with lawyers, and other back-end economic activities that > are > not primary production. (n.b.: I'm not saying that those are of no > value; they are very valuable to our complete economy. (If you don't > believe in, say, the value of venture capitalism, look at a country > without it.) But there must be some ratio of primary to secondary > economic activity beyond which it's unsustainable -- *somebody* has to > actually grow the food and build the automobiles. The same argument > applies to entertainment costs.) > > --Rod > > > > ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:37 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYQ00G0J60LBO@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:12:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C41D5A30D for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:13:39 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D8C8E9B for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:35:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net (exhub016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net [207.5.72.163]) by cygnus.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 721819C for ; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:35:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.173]) by EXHUB016-1.exch016.msoutlookonline.net ([207.5.72.163]) with mapi; Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:35:30 -0700 Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:35:18 -0700 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <0E6E608443A703489B63435E45E642712C4C778EB9@EXVMBX016-3.exch016.msoutlookonline.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-language: en-US Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Thread-Topic: Re: good question Credit Default Swaps Thread-Index: AQHIlSKdc+A0cJFC/EiLa0BIMgk4nQ== Accept-Language: en-US acceptlanguage: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-Listbox-UUID: DF8AFFF0-0115-11DD-8AB4-B11457A607E7 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 ________________________________________ From: gruntled@gmail.com [gruntled@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Dave Wilson [dav= e@wilson.net] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 7:09 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Re: good question Credit Default Swaps Not exactly. First, I need to emphasize that I'm speaking solely for myself. You can think of derivatives as a piece of paper that allows people to inve= st in the future value of an item -- whether a commodity like a house or a = share of stock -- without actually owning that item. That is, you can place= a bet on price fluctuations of something without going through the effort = of actually buyng that something. For example, you commit to selling your s= tuff on a specfic date for a specific price; the buyer is betting your stuf= f will be worth more than what he's paying for it on that future date, whil= e you are wagering that it will be worth less than what you'll be getting f= or it; somebody is going to come out ahead and somebody wll lose money on t= hat deal. It's a contractual arrangement, and this sort of thing goes back = thousands of years. Derivatives are arguably best used as a risk management= tool, a type of insurance that allows one to "hedge" against a negative (t= hough presumably unlikely) outcome; farmers do this sort of thing all the t= ime to guard aganst a season of bad weather, for example. The problem is that derivatives can let you do all this without actually sp= ending any money. At least initially. You can sign a contract betting on the price of derivatives by spending jus= t tiny fraction of what you're agreeing to pay at the end of the contract. = And if your bet pays off, thats not a problem: You pay your contract and k= eep your profits. But if you bet wrong, you could be in serious trouble: Yo= u have to come up with that cash. To do that if you're bet wrong in a very = bigh way, you generally have to have a fire sale of your other assets, whic= h can depress the prices for other people who hold similar assets, so they = wind up dumping their assets too, which drives prices down further. So, to say the well over $400 trillion in derivatives isnt "real money" is = incorrect; when your contract comes due, you've got to pay up or go bankrup= t. Now, in traditional US investing, there are limits on the amount of debt yo= u can go into when investing; your level of "leverage" is limited. This is = designed to prevent the guy who cuts my hair from waking up one day and bet= ting that GM shares wll gain 200 points next week; requiring that a substan= tial part of that bet be made with real money limits such investments to pe= ople who have to put some skin in the game, so they are (or are at least su= pposed to be) more cautious. (I tiredly note that such leverage restriction= s in US markets were enacted when the Great Depression demonstrated what ha= ppens when the guy who cuts your hair starts shorting stocks...) In contrast, while some derivatives are traded in highly structured markets= -- like my farmer example -- many more are traded with no oversight or reg= ulatory restriction at all. Further complicating this is that these contrac= ts, because they have "value," have come to be traded as though they were c= urrency. So you've basically got the investment community printing its own = money. You can have a million dollar derviative contract by putting up just a few= thousand dollars of your own money. Bet right, and you win huge. Bet wrong= , and you're out of business (like Bear Sterns). But it's not just you who's out of business. Anybody who you owed money to = is also out of business, as is anybody that those people owed money to. Thi= s kind of cascade failure can topple economies overnight (which is why the = Federal Reserve decided to prop up the shell of Bear Sterns last month). The reason the amount of money traded in derivatives is important is that i= t gives us handle on how much leverage we're talking about, that is, how mu= ch we should be concerned if a downturn in the economy starts causing these= bets on derivatives to have been poor ones. Here's a summation: The estimated total of the US money supply is maybe $20 trillion. The estim= ated value of derivatives -- which, as I'm sure you've probably realized af= ter my little lecture here, you can think of as a essentialy an unregulated= money supply -- is $500 trillion. That's half a... well, numbers after a t= rillion are pretty much meaningless, so let's just say it's about 35 times = the total US Gross Domestic Product. In fact, it's almost ten times the Gro= ss Domestic Product of every nation in the world added together. So that's a *lot* of leverage there. Its no wonder that Warren Buffet calle= d derivatives a ticking time bomb and "financial weapons of mass destructio= n." When they go bad, they go bad in a very big way. Leverage (debt) is lik= e that; it's great being able to take out a loan and pay it back with futur= e profits. The leverage amplifies your win, since you didn't have to put up= your own money. But if you bet wrong, leverage amplifies your losses on th= e same scale. There's lots of other issues with derivatives. For example, a lot of people= say they encourage participants to be less than scrupulous with their acco= unting (see Enron). But the leverage thing is the big concern at this point. On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 5:32 PM, David Farber > wrote: ________________________________________ From: Rod Van Meter [rdv@sfc.wide.ad.jp] Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 5:09 PM To: David Farber; eric.cecil@gmail.com Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] good question Credit Default Swaps > IOW, how can you bet more than twice the amount of money than there exist= s in the entire U.S. economy? > > ... I simply attempting to grasp what it means when someone says $45 tril= lion is in play, but the U.S. economy =3D $22 trillion. > I would be the *last* person to know anything serious about markets, but I think you've misunderstood something here: the value of the securities (the debt on the mortgages, right?) is only $7T, but the amount of trading of those securities was worth $45T. That is, the average mortgage traded hands 45/7 =3D ~6.5 times in *one year*. So there is not twice the total size of the economy in debt "in play". This is equivalent to asking the total value of the stocks that get traded on the stock market in a year. I have no idea what the number is, but it's a *lot* more than the total sales of all the companies. When a mortgage trades hands, obviously that's a financial transaction; I have no idea what number is added to the size of the U.S. economy -- what "value" does that trade have? If it were 100%, then the $22T total economy would have to be greater than $45T, right? But nobody could afford to trade them at that rate. It's probably a small fraction of a percent of the value of the loan, or the banks couldn't afford to trade them seven times a year. We're wandering a little far from IP's primary mission, but I'm curious what fraction of the total economy is "paper trading" of securities, consulting with lawyers, and other back-end economic activities that are not primary production. (n.b.: I'm not saying that those are of no value; they are very valuable to our complete economy. (If you don't believe in, say, the value of venture capitalism, look at a country without it.) But there must be some ratio of primary to secondary economic activity beyond which it's unsustainable -- *somebody* has to actually grow the food and build the automobiles. The same argument applies to entertainment costs.) --Rod ------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:38 2008 Return-Path: Received: from DD-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YSPL1@elistx.com> for interesting-people-2179@archive.www.interesting-people.org; Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:46:33 -0400 (EDT) Received: from D-IPEOPLE.elistx.com by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) id <0JZZ00J01YS2FW@elistx.com> for interesting-people@direct.www.interesting-people.org (ORCPT interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org); Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: from thorn.listbox.com (thorn.listbox.com [208.210.124.75]) by elistx.com (PMDF V6.3-2x2 #31546) with ESMTP id <0JYR00JH778M4B@elistx.com> for interesting-people@www.interesting-people.org; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:36:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by thorn.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24940A50B for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:37:42 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B2DC06C for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:57:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sasl.smtp.pobox.com (a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com [207.106.133.19]) by apex.listbox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id D50E15F for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:57:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost.localdomain (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B388E2D41 for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:56:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from FARBERMAC.ISRI.CMU.EDU (FARBERMAC.ISRI.CMU.EDU [128.2.220.234]) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 712812D40 for ; Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:56:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:56:50 -0400 From: David Farber Subject: [IP] No Starch Press Turns Table on File Sharing--Media Alert To: ip Errors-to: Reply-to: dave@farber.net Message-id: <2ABCDE8F-16BA-47C7-B174-BACF2DA0C246@farber.net> MIME-version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v919.2) X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.919.2) Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=WINDOWS-1252 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable X-Listbox-UUID: DE5CEC68-0185-11DD-9999-D911199CFB26 X-Listbox-List-ID: 247 References: List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , List-Help: List-Id: List-Software: listbox.com v2.0 Begin forwarded message: From: "Victor Marks" Date: April 3, 2008 9:50:09 AM EDT To: dave@farber.net Subject: No Starch Press Turns Table on File Sharing--Media Alert Dave, For IP if you wish. This is a PR announcement from oreilly - they're distributing two books on bittorrent networks. They frame this as 'beating piracy' by being first to distribute and controlling the release by initiating rather than an individual 'pirate' initiating distribution. Notably, the author of the release says "The truth of the matter is that the battle to stop people from posting copyrighted material to torrent sites is one that can't be won. Beside the fact that No Starch Press sells PDFs without DRM (digital rights management) protections, anything that can be viewed online can be captured and pirated." Add this to the Canadian television program being distributed by bittorrent, and linux distributions available by bittorrent, and we're seeing bittorrent transformed slowly from 'evil illegal pirate network' into just another service like email, http, and instant messaging. ISPs are going to have to find a way to accommodate customers who wish to use these services, I expect. Regards, Victor Marks ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ariel Schwartz Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:30 AM Subject: No Starch Press Turns Table on File Sharing--Media Alert To: victor@macnn.com If you cannot read the information below, click here. CONTACT: Ariel Schwartz nostarchpr@oreilly.com 415.863.9900 x301 No Starch Press Turns Table on File Sharing Posts torrent versions of best-selling tech books with 11,000 combined downloads in first week San Francisco, CA=97No Starch Press, publisher of geek books, is trying something interesting with file-sharing sites. Recognizing that the book business is changing and that books end up on file-sharing sites within days of being released in electronic form, they thought they'd take matters into their own hands. The result? No Starch released their own "official pirate version" of two best-selling backlist titles, Leander Kahney's The Cult of Mac and The Cult of iPod. News of the release became a viral hit online, and there were over 11,000 downloads of the books in the first week. "I've always felt that these two books should have sold many more copies than they actually have," said No Starch Press publisher Bill Pollock, "but that they suffered from a lack of visibility. As four-color, coffee-table books, they were never released electronically and never appeared on torrent sites. So these two were good choices for this little experiment." Visibility online came swiftly. One of No Starch's editors had shared 2GB of data from his home PC within hours of the initial upload. By the next day, The Cult of Mac became the #1 book on the infamous torrent site, The Pirate Bay. And a story about the experiment posted to TorrentFreak.com reached the front page of popular social news site Digg. The truth of the matter is that the battle to stop people from posting copyrighted material to torrent sites is one that can't be won. Beside the fact that No Starch Press sells PDFs without DRM (digital rights management) protections, anything that can be viewed online can be captured and pirated. Within days of its release, No Starch Press's best-selling Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition, was scraped from an e-book site and posted to multiple file-sharing networks. Of course, part of the reason for No Starch releasing these titles on P2P sites is political. As major organizations and ISPs work to shut down file sharing, No Starch aims to remind them that P2P has valid uses as well=97even for traditional content providers. "File sharing itself, or P2P, is not a crime," said Pollock. "It can be a great way for willing artists to share their work. That's not to say that stealing copyrighted material is not a crime, and our actions are not in any way meant to endorse it." "If this experiment works, we'll try more titles," Pollock said. "And even if it doesn't work, we may try more titles, if only to beat pirates at their own game." For more information please email nostarchpr@oreilly.com. About No Starch Press Founded in 1994, No Starch Press is one of the few remaining independent computer book publishers. We publish the finest in geek entertainment=97unique books on technology, with a focus on Open Source, security, hacking, programming, alternative operating systems, and LEGO. Our titles have personality, our authors are passionate, and our books tackle topics that people care about. See www.nostarch.com for more information and our complete online catalog. (And most No Starch Press books use RepKover, a lay-flat binding that won't snap shut.) # # # -------------------------------------------   From interesting-people-errors+interesting-people-2179+40archive+2Ewww+2Einteresting-people+2Eorg@www.interesting-people.org Sun Apr 27 14:57:39 2008 Return-Path: