Hambric's Curve Has Moved - Click Above

FYI, I am in the middle of updating the new location of Hambric's Curve. Future posts will be made at the new location, http://hambric.net/blog/ I'm still trying to get the feeds over there to work properly, and the attempts are seriously cutting into my writing time! My box of draft posts is starting to build.

Math-It Does A Body (of data) Good: or How Cold Calculations Can Craft A Kingdom

Earlier this evening, while walking the aisles of Home Depot in search of a replacement part for my toilet, I was listening to the Business Week podcast about its cover story, Math Will Rock Your World. As far as the business world is concerned, the mathematician is the new MBA. After all, Google is basically a company built on the the stuff. In fact, they can start a new campaign, inspired by Julie:

"Google, Where the [algo]Rithm Method Really Works!"

But I digress. Listening to the podcast, I'd like to relate something that came to my mind after hearing one particular tidbit from the interview with the author.

In speaking about the current two most important languages in the world, English and math, the comment was made that in America, since we are absolutely fluent in English, that we as a society have allowed ourselves to slack off of the other language, math. Instead, we 'outsource' the need to understand higher math to foreigners. I find that premise to be a fairly true measure of America's education system - coast to coast. Of course, it also depends on what is meant by "fluent", but that's a discussion for another time (and another person).

In Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, if I am not mistaken, there is one section in which he writes about the danger of a leader relying too heavily on mercenaries to do one's fighting. The reason being that the time may come when the hired hands realize just how vulnerable the employer is to being overthrown, whether it be done so that the mercenary can take power, or has simply been paid more by someone else. (Click here to visit the free Project Gutenberg Etext of The Prince.) Please don't misinterpret my remarks evoking Machiavelli's words as a direct comparison of 16th century mercenary soldiers with foreign mathematicians in the US! In this case, the 'foreigner' is the one who understands the higher mathematics, be s/he from the US or not. Why shouldn't those who 'get it' simply refuse to drag along those who don't?

(Now, before you finish your 'tut tuts' and lip clicking, let me remind you that I come from a liberal arts background with a more than necessary (read: unhealthy) amount of time spent studying literature. As such, I feel completely at ease with the process of attaching my own meanings to words. If you don't get it, well, why should I help?)

You laugh, but maybe 42 really is the answer! Did you get the question?

BBC News Story on (sp)iTunes Fails to Mention Omniture

BBC has put up a story on the controversy surrounding the latest release of iTunes (BBC NEWS | Technology | Snooping fears plague new iTunes.) They respectfully credit the blogs of Marc Garrett, since1988 , and Kirkville's very own Kirk McElhearn (Kirkville).

The article mentions the Gracenotes and iTunes 6.0 connection, but for some odd reason fails to mention the connection between Omniture and iTunes 6.0.2 that has so many up in arms.

Apple's collection of data via a third party, Omniture, seems sneaky to the point of being nefariously Microsoftish because it is not mentioned in any of the software's litterature or agreements. I use iTunes 6.0, and when I connect to the Music Store, there is a consenting exchange of information and services. When I close that connection, the exchange of information ceases (I believe...). The point is, I have consented to and am aware that I am providing Apple with my private information. The consenting nature of the transaction was broken in the initial release of iTunes 6.0.2. I say initial because I will give Apple the benefit of the doubt and trust them to do the right thing for its customers

Apples very weak, yet semantically correct response that it "does not save or store any information used to create recommendations for the MiniStore" is allowed to stand unchallenged in the article. The omission of the Omniture angle leaves a gap in the story's information quotient. Although it's true Omniture is not Apple, but it is doing Apple's bidding. If not, then Apple needs to fix its product, because it is sending information about Apple's customers to someone else!

Also, there's no mention of Boing Boing! Shocking!

A Sterling Example of Truth in Reporting Financial Results: Burnham's Beat

Bill Burnham, Chief Blogger of Burnham's Beats, proudly (and hysterically) reported record results for 4Q05, including "[e]arnings before expenses, which management believes are the most cynical results we can think of (...)"

Although earnings were up an astounding 176%, Mr. Bill added some inciteful comentary on the dificult decisions he had to make to produce such fantastic results:

"This quarter’s results continue to demonstrate that blogging is a complete waste time. While we did not achieve our previously forecasted results of 100 billion page views and ‘Google-style cash, Baby!’, we remain hopeful that people forgot about those projections. "

Efficient Market Hypothesis? Yeah, great. So how are my investments doing?

Sometimes facts can get in the way of a good story. When that story involves investment returns, the insidious nature of 'humble arithmatic' can really put the stink on your mutual funds' returns (that's stink, not stank.) At least, that's what one of the industry's giants posits. In The Relentless Rules of Humble Arithmetic, by John Bogle, of The Vanguard Group, published in the most recent issue of the CFA Insitute's Financial Analyst Journal, John delivers bigtime for both his followers and his detractors, who say he has the "uncanny ability to recognize the obvious", with a single quote:

"Gross returns in the financial markets minus the costs of financial intermediation equal the net returns actually delivered to investors."

This "obvious" observation forms the backbone for what he calls the CMH (or Cost Matters Hypothesis). He goes on to explain the CMH in relation to a long-forgotten PhD thesis by Louis Bachelier, in which the premise is that investors as a group must be average. John then takes Bachelier's theory and calls bullshit on it, but in a polite way - Bachelier held back when he should have pushed forward:

Of course, Bachelier was right. However, when he went on to conclude that "the mathematical expectation of the speculator is zero," Bachelier was wrong. He didn't go far enough. For the fact is that the mathematical expectation of the speculator and the long-term investor alike is not zero. It is zero minus the cost of playing the game, a shortfall to the stock market's return that is precisely equal to the sum total of all those advisory fees, marketing expenditures, sales loads, brokerage commisions, legal and transaction costs, custody fees, and security-processing expenses.

Yeah Bo-ii! He doesn't explicitly include investment bankers among the Wall Street hoi poloi (he's risen above), but they might as well be lumped in, somehow.

Capital Gains Are Your Friends

It's official: Tax season has arrived. I just received my post-holiday present from the IRS, and the reality that I will soon be filing my taxes hit home. For those out there facing long-term capital gains (i.e., you've held the stock for at least one year), go check out this single Q&A (one question and one answer) on the subject at USA Today by clicking here.

The tax implications of any investment, of course, should be considered for most mortals. After all, whatever qualifiers are used, the only return that matters is the one that is all yours - not the gross, not the pretax, not the 'before fees' not, in short, any qualified return except the net-after-tax-all-mine return. Because all the middlemen and women have to take their cuts before you get yours. So, while you may beat the false target of an index on a gross basis, what does it matter if that's not what is really and truly yours? On the topic of personal finance, I recommend a quick click over to Robert Kiyosaki's column on Yahoo! Finance to check his post titled "Why the Rich Get Richer" that I posted on earlier.

This is Not Cool: "iTunes Update Spies On You"

For many of us who have accepted the iPod and iTunes into our homes, the current buzz going around is that the updated iTunes, version 6.0.2, is spying on its users, and relaying information back to Apple without the user's explicit (or even implicit) consent. Boing Boing has put a post that that really makes the point:

I love iTunes because it's a clean music player. But no amount of clean UI is worth surrendering my privacy for -- I wouldn't buy a stereo that phoned home to Panasonic and told it what I was listening to; I wouldn't buy a shower radio that delivered my tuning preferences to Blaupunkt. I certainly am not comfortable with Apple shoulder-surfing me while I listen to digital music, particularly if they're doing so without my meaningful, informed consent and without disclosing what they intend on doing with that data.

First there was the change in the end-user's ability to 'manage' the "Fairplay" DRM if one updated to iTunes 6.0. Now this? Apple is just like any other large tech company that needs to learn how to treat its new customers so they become its loyal customers.

The GeigerPod - Musical Science or Scientific Music?

I came across this beauty that is worth a gander. Over at Edgadget, they've posted a photo of what must have slipped out of Steve's folder over a MacWorld:The GeigerPod

Now Where's My Echo?

I just did a couple of searches using the dropdown box on my Firefox browser. First up, Google. I tried 'David Hambric', and 'Hambric's Curve'. Then I did the same two searches after picking Yahoo! from the dropdown menu. Now, considering that I use Blogger, a Google property, imagine my 'surprise' to find better results with Yahoo! than with Google. Much to its credit, the Yahoo! search didn't give me that condescending "Did you mean:" with my name misspelled. No, it actually returned a full fledged link to one of my pages! Cool.

What also surprised me about the search results was the hinted existence of a bloger's karma of sorts: the first two links on Google from the 'David Hambric' search were because of comments I left on Don Dodge's blog, The Next Big Thing. Again, cool.

Steve and Bill Can BOTH Kiss My A**: Or Why I Need A MacBook Pro Running Windows XP Pro

I arrived home yesterday evening at around 6:30 pm, and found that half of the memory I ordered on line had arrived. I checked the status on line of the other half and discovered that it is set to arrive on the 11th, although it shipped on the same day is the stick I received. Curious, but I digress. You see, this is a brief post about my upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP.

I had been planing to upgrade my second computer at home to Windows XP ever since the moment after I had experienced first hand on our main home computer just how much better an OS it is than Windows 2000. Now that more than a year has passed since upgrading the first computer, I thought the memories from that first upgrade would be if not completely burried, then at least sufficiently suppressed to allow me to once again tempt the fates and see the world through the eyes of Bill Gates.

I bopped upstairs, went to the back room (which will be renamed 'Guest Room' if it ever gets cleaned), opened up my laptop, dropped in the new stick of memory, closed it and fired it up to make sure the installation went as planned. It had. All in all, the first 2 minutes of my upgrade went as smooth as silk. In hindsight, a little too smoothly. I should have seen the signs, but my excitement made it much to easy to ignore the sudden chilling of the room caused by the cold spot over the Windows XP Pro CD, and block the faint cackling in my left ear. The tinge of hunger was dismissed out of hand because I knew I would be done with this and hurriedly eating my dinner in about 15 minutes. Then I put in The Disc. Click this, click that. Estimated installation time: 60-90 minutes. Oh, sh*t...

At 10:30, I decided to "take a break" and get something to eat. The OS was loaded, and now the computer was waiting for the rest of the programs to be loaded. I went to the kitchen, opened the fridge and weighed my options. You know what, PB&J + Coke = Crazy Delicious!

At 1:00 AM, after the third round of installing and uninstalling Norton Anti Virus 2006, I left the computer and went to bed.

I saw the new MacBook Pro with the Intel Core Duo! :o Drooollllll... This post was typed on my updated laptop. It's got Windows XP.

Is Gelly to GM what Gili is to J Lo?

OK, this post has nothing to do with the new Gelly, but it does cover GM. I just couldn't resist. FT.com reports that a close advisor to Kirk Kerkorian, one of GM's largest investors, will call for GM to cut its dividend, which is probably not a bad idea. The article goes on to state that GM pays $1.1 billion a year in dividends, while its burning through its cash. In a Wall Street Journal article that appeared later, it states that Kerkorian's advisor, Jerome York, called for a 50% cut in the dividend to $1 per share. More importantly, he calls for a substantial reduction in compensation for GM's directors and top management,

"with progressively smaller pay cuts down through the ranks, 'with hopefully only a single-digit reduction necessary among the rank and file in plants and offices.'"

Robert Barry, a Goldman Sach analyst, is given some cheerleading credit for the recent upward move in GM's stock price. I have not read his report, but from the FT article, I gather that he see it as "very unlikely" that GM would soon file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. I am not in that camp, but he is not alone in his opinion.

I wouldn't advise an investment until GM's board gets serious about turning its ship around. A strong start would be to replace the captain that set it on its current course. Just a thought.

The January Effect: Anomalous Returns (from the chili?)

In an AP story posted on Mercury News, there seems to be some doubt about the "January Effect's" likelihood to hold sway over the equity markets in 2006: 'January Effect' may be hard to keep up. At least, that's the impression one gets from the story's title. But read a little ways into, like, oh, let's say, the second paragraph?, and one can't help but wonder why the title wasn't changed to fit the tone of the article.

A friend and I were just talking about this last night, and noting, if memory served us correctly, that the stock market's initial days last year were pretty much mirrored by its performance for the remainder of 2005. Looking back on the year without the benefit of data in front of me (or the compulsion to go get any), I don't recall last year's returns being anything spectac. But this year is off to a raging start! Google has everyone thinking 'bubble', even if only a few are willing to say it. Hey, I want to believe too, but Ja heezus, have you seen GOOG's valuations? Of course, it's a bit easier to see what all the fuss is about, especially when you're putting up quarterly year-on-year revenue growth of 95% and earnings growth of 633%! Cha Ching!

That headline was clearly meant to get attention. So far this year, I read very few words that are decidedly against the January Effect.

Sympathy for the Devil: or jogging with the right playlist on your iPod

The power of music. Who can deny it? When you're feeling low, it can let you know that you still have much farther to drop before you hit the bottom, and be more than willing to help you get there. At least, that's how I felt today at mile three of my run. I was on empty! [Note to self, eat more than a banana before next run.] I CSI'd today's problem, and traced it back to my playlist. Or for the investigative sticklers, my need for a running playlist.


At first, running with some old Stones playing was a joy. I forgot just how much I like Keef's singing on Little T&A, which will have a place on my inaugaral running playlist. Another gem, which is also featured below under "Getting Much iPod Time", is Curve's Hell Above The Water. If you haven't heard this, just click over to Amazon, scroll down a bit to the "Listen to Samples" section and...listen to the sample! The combination of a crunchy, much overdriven guitar played by Dean Garcia, and Toni Halliday's lushly dark voice in and of themselves make this a fine piece of work. Curriously enough, the beat turned out to be a fantastic pace setter during my run, and will also to be on the inaugaral running playlist.

The key to a proper running playlist, the CSI team has informed me, is a beat that matches your pace. Therein lies the crux of today's unnecessary pain: Nirvana may work well for Greg LeMond in his bid to win the Tour de France, but it's much too fast for my huffing and puffing through the streets of Washington, DC!


So now I'm in the process of sussing out David's Inaugaral Running Playlist. Any suggestions?

Note to Consumer from BellSouth: Bend Over

Since I am old enough to remember when AT&T was a monopoly, and its subsequent break-up by the g-men, the recent airing of commercials about the name change of AT&T/SBC back to simply AT&T has me wondering which set of regulators were wrong: the old men who said AT&T was a bad monopoly that had to be split up (birth of the Baby Bells), or the more recent ones that see no problem with the Baby Bells regrouping?

Now, I guess, seeking to revive a bit of the 'good ole days', some telcos are testing the waters of this whole Internet thing as a way to make more money. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, the subtitle says it all:

"Content Providers May Face Charges for Fast Access; Billing the Consumer Twice?"

Huh? Isn't that last part the type of sh*t the regulators are supposed to prevent in the name of consumer protection? [Stop calling me naive!] Well, according to the WSJ piece, BellSouth is negotiating to reach agreements on fees to "guarantee fast content delivery over the Internet." So wait a minute, are you telling me that if one of the Baby Bells feels it is not receiving the fees to which it feels entitled, then my DSL service (for which I pay one of them about $75/month) just won't be fast enough to make downloading content worthwhile. They will kick my a#@ back to the days of dial-up, 56K-style service? AT&T and Verizon seem to think BellSouth is on the right path. And BellSouth's Jeff Battcher seems to think they are entitled to the higher fees:

"During the hurricanes, Google didn't pay to have the DSL restored," said BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher. "We're paying all that money."

Well, from just where in the hell does Jeff think that money comes? "Jeff, that top line on your income statement, Revenue, comes from Us, man! Don't you remember? You said 'sign the contract and pay us on time and we'll provide you with this serivce called DSL. It's crazy fast!' So, Jeff, if something goes wrong on your side of the deal, it's your responsability to fix it. Not mine nor Google's, nor Yahoo!'s, or anyone else's. It's on you, man. So, Jeff, man up!

Fred, over at A VC, has put up a post whose title pretty much hits the nail on the head: Jealousy. Go give it a read.

Retirement? I Hope You Have A Plan B!

In his column over at Yahoo!Finance titled Why the Rich Get Richer, Robert Kiyosaki put up one post last October that I found to be very much on the money. In Work Hard, Earn Less?, Robert, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, provides a smidge of the salient advice he got from his "rich" dad:

"If you want to earn more and pay less in taxes, you need to have people and your money work hard for you." In other words, my rich dad encouraged me to be an entrepreneur and investor.

Of course, we've all heard the same thing, so what makes this article worth your time? If you think the largest obstacle to your retirement well-being is the return you may or may not earn on your 401(k), then you should read the article. If, instead, you believe your treatment at the hands of the taxman will be your undoing, then you should read the article. I guess the point I'm trying to make is, Go Read Robert's Article! It won't cost you more than a few minutes of your time, and it's tax-free (for now)!

This List of 3 Leads to More; or Why Firefox 1.5 is The Web's Best Browser

Does that seem like a bold statement to make, particularly in these dawning days of the Web 2.0?  I should hope so, because I want to drive home the point that the Firefox 1.5 web browser is so much more user friendly that any other I 've used.  It seems, as I find with so much of today's better technology, not everything of use is told to consumers up front.  What the hell am I trying to say, you wonder?  Just this, to really take advantage of the conveniences offered in the Firefox browser, it pays to do a little more research (advanced researchers, click here), and to that end, I'd like to take the opportunity to point you, or rather have you point your browser towards some useful links at Lifehacker.

---

• Lifehacker's tips for using Firefox are a good place to start.


• This link is for those who want to reduce the use of the mouse in their browsing


• This one is also pretty cool. Fifteen Firefox Quick Searches. And don't forget to read the comments. I found this in the second one: Ctrl+K will take to the search bar of the Google toolbar in Firefox, fyi.

My Bloglines Feeds

I just glanced at the Firefox tabs I have open, and on the Bloglines tab, it shows the number of feeds: 666! AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
By the by, did not know the Veep had a blog?! First we have to learn from the press, for Chrissakes, that he's a [i]Pod-head, and now we have Google him just to get the link to his blog! Not even in the top 200 on Bloglines...yet! Just give him time, he's gonna start blowin' minds!

There Must Be Some Kinda Way Outta Here, Said The Junkie To The...

An Alternative Exit Route, or the 1980s Redux?

In the category of "trends pointing to private equity excesses", Henny Sender over at the WSJ (sorry, you may need a subscription) put up an article on the use of debt recapitalizations, something that reminds me of the 1980s (you remember, Drexel Burnham, Mike Milken, Gordon Geko, greed, etc. Writing about the recent liquidity event Intelsat provided its brand spanking new masters, Sender penned:

"The ink had barely dried on the sale documents about a year ago when the new private-equity owners of satellite operator Intelsat -- Apax Partners Inc., Apollo Management, Madison Dearborn Partners and Permira Advisers -- paid themselves a $350 million dividend financed with newly issued Intelsat debt."

At first glance, this is smacks of greed without the benefit of sound stewardship. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for greed in investments, as long as it is accompanied by sound management, especially if the livelihood of many would be at risk from a company's failure due to greed-fueled incompetent management. In some cases, the acquired company can afford to pay its owners a divided whether from cash or increased debt. In some instances, this is simply another exit route for investors, just as valid as a strategic sale or an IPO. It just so happens that during the first half of the first decade of the the 21st century, conditions have been favorable for this type of deal. (Hedge funds need paper, too!) But in other cases, increased leverage can negatively impact a company's ability to operate (higher cost of capital, reduced working capital, management not focused on running the business.)

It looks like some in the industry want to do for private equity what Drexel Burnham did for the buyout in the 1980s - sully its public persona, to say the least. It's no great surprise that hedge funds have been key to this practice, but then it looks to me like the hedge funds are just being hedge funds. I don't know why the private equity firms are doing it. Perhaps too many young MBAs? Bascially, the problem dividend recaps are those where managers are (1) overpaying going in, (2) then transfer some of the company's assets to themselfs via dividends and fees, (3) do little to nothing to add value to the company, (4) but instead add to the company's burdens (debt), and (5) then they pray they can get over on the public through an IPO.

On top of the dividend recap, some firms are charing fees that are not necessarily in the best interest of their portfolio companies. It seems that with LPs finding the stones to counter the use of fees to create a profit center for the GP, some GP geniuses have decided to collect those fees from their investees instead (or in addition to, if they can get away with it.)

For more on this topic, check out the article by Caren Chesler over at Investment Dealer's Digest: "The Wheels Come Off For Dividend Recaps."

New Words for Webster's

Cynthia Pasquale's article in the Denver Post, Word watchers navigate sea of change in English language, is worth a read if only for the list of new words at its end. Here are a couple of my personal favorites:

Fauxhemian: Those people who adopt aspects of the appearance and trappings of the Bohemian lifestyle without actually straying too far from the straight and narrow of social conventions.

Isn't that a powerfully descriptive word? Should absolutely be included on anyone's list of new words with staying power. Here is another beauty:

Meanderthal: A person who walks particularly slowly and aimlessly, often toting cellphones and delaying pedestrian or motor traffic.

Another one that conjures up mental pictures of frustrating circs. Go read the article, and when you're done, post some new words in the comment section below. If you're really itching to know how the English language is changing, go check out WordSpy.com, a wonderful site that allows the dictionary-reader in you to look like you're surfing the web, checking out all the cool sites where the hip dudes and chicks hang. (Is hip dated?)

Hackers F**k with Big Brother's Cameras

Wired has a story about the little guy getting some of his own back against a watchful government. Click the link above to read how the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz is peeping on the peepers. Read how they are intercepting, and in some cases tampering with the closed-circuit surveillance cameras watching over public spaces. Think any group would try that here in the US?

Wealth of banality at your fingertips

For those of you able to accessthis article on FT.com, go check it out. If you're not able to get it, I hope my little mention of it here does justice to it. This is especially relevant to anyone working on or interested in the potential of the internet, because as the author and FT technology correspondent, Kevin Allison, put it: "2005 may be remembered as the year that the internet’s potential for distraction and diversion soared to unheard-of heights."

The article's opening sentence starts off full of promise: "Somewhere between the online tutorial about rock star poses and a study on the mind-ray- blocking properties of tin foil hats, the computer alerted me to the message in my inbox." That message was from his boss, shaking him out of his procrastination fueled by the fact that "[n]ever before has so much infomation, of such little importance, been so easily accessible."

Basically, Kevin is raging on the internet's democratization of publishing. And he does a pretty good job of it at that. In the 6th, 9th and 10th paragraphs, Kevin presents the evidence, brings up the history, and then points out the absurdity that the democratization of the internet has unleashed. Read them for yourself:

"Over at Boingboing, readers are treated to links to video footage of alleged sasquatch sightings, scans of old Soviet New Year’s greeting cards and other moments of internet Zen. And, if they so choose, readers at Memepool can immerse themselves in a concise online history of the codpiece – no doubt the first of its kind."

[...]

"Centuries ago, the advent of the printing press broke the clergy’s monopoly on knowledge and ushered in a profound upheaval that culminated in the Enlightenment. But now, at my desk, with five browser windows open, I can’t help wondering whether, in this new publishing era, society is faced with diminishing returns."

"It is not hard to imagine a world in the near future where those who sit in the lap of luxury pay to have people scour the earth, picking out only the most important bits of information to deliver to them each day, free of distractions and diversions. Something like a newspaper springs to mind."

I am not entirely sure what to make of this article. Is Kevin lashing out at those who would have their voices heard, no matter how screeching or inane they may be to his ears, or is he simply relating his inability to use Google in a way that is meaningful to him and his craft? I cannot say, but I did like the way he put the words together.

Go Over to the Edge

If finding cool websites that stimulate that thing between your ears [begins with "B", ryhmes with 'train'] is among your New Year's resolution, then start the year off right by checking out this website, Edge.org. At the very least, you can get this year's question and a headstart on everyone else who will, eventually, hear about this site. Who knows, given enough time (like 364 days), even I might be able to come up with some seriously fine response to Q06. What's Q06, you ask? Click on this link: "What Is Your Dangerous Idea?" Get to thinking!