Why New York City rents are sky-high
The concentration of “high-net-worth” individuals in 2009 is as follows:
- New York City: 667,200 (persons)
- Los Angeles: 235,800
- Chicago: 198,100
- Washington, DC: 152,400
- San Francisco: 138,300
A “high-net-worth” dude or dudette is one with $1 million or more in investment assets (i.e. money other than primary residence, collectibles, or durable goods like cars, appliances, electronics, etc.). The data is from a research report by Capgemini that made its way in the NY Times.
Now, Manhattan has an official Census population of ~1,6 million people. Granted, not all the millionaires live on the island, but most do, so approximately speaking, 40% of inhabitants have lots and lots of disposable cash. No wonder my lame landlord charges me $2500/mo for a “large” studio with shitty 1970s windows that I’ve only seen in the Communist era in Eastern Europe. Hey, PanAm! (my lame landlord) Romanian peasants in the poor country-side now have double-glazed windows! Be enlightened for once in your life!
Another interesting thought: no matter how enchanted we are with high-tech, the world is still ruled by old money.
Peace!
Should I patch or should I jailbreak?
The iPhone is great product, but the dependency on the AT&T network and the lame restrictions both companies put in place make it a-less-than-ideal experience. My biggest complaint is the inability to use a local SIM card when I travel to Europe for business.
It’s ironic that after so much effort to digitally sign firmware updates, one can jailbreak iOS 4.0.1 by exploiting a security vulnerability. The vulnerability is so dangerous though that it’s hard to argue against patching when the fix is eventually released.
I’m so torn… should I patch or should I jailbreak?
Thanks Lenovo for updating drivers to Win7 for older hardware
Recently I upgraded my 3.5yr old Thinkpad to Windows 7 and the experience couldn’t have been smoother (and faster). I’m glad that finally Microsoft and the OEMs figured out the “driver supply chain”. Windows 7 setup + post-setup Windows Update does a great job of identifying and retrieving the proper drivers.
The big kudos here goes to Lenovo however. My Thinkpad has an embedded EV-DO modem that connects to Verizon and on which I depend heavily for work while on the road. It’s made by Sierra Wireless and it’s among the first models that OEMs started embedding in their laptops. I was concerned I wouldn’t find a driver for it, but Lenovo published an update not just to the driver, but also to their connection manager app so the broadband experience is even better than XP or Vista.
This is more than I can say for HP which on multiple occasions did not publish updated drivers for hardware I own when a new OS was released (the Laserjet 3055 All-in-one comes to mind which hasn’t had drivers for Vista let alone Win 7). Bad, bad, HP!
Thanks Lenovo!
Warren Buffett promoting business like Richard Branson?
I was flipping through the Dec 14, 2009 issue of Newsweek and on the inside cover there’s a spread advertisement for GEICO. What’s different about this one is that the text refers poignantly to the greatness of Warren Buffet:
What the Gecko lacks in stature he certainly makes up for in ability. In fact, under the ownership of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., he’s helped GEICO rise to become the nation’s third-largest car insurance company. [...]
Has the Gecko really been Buffet all along? 
Also, The GEICO logo now features in small-type: “a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.”
The whole thing caught my eye since I’m reading at present Buffet: The Making of An American Capitalist which goes into detail about the GEICO investment in the late 70s. The 2009 recession has definitely positioned Warren Buffet as an investment genius even more so than before. The fact that GEICO uses his persona image to promote itself and associate with those values is similar to how Branson uses his feats and persona perception to aid the promotion of his Virgin businesses.
Foodie birthday dinner
In between exams and end of year business chores Felicia was such a darling and cooked a beautiful birthday dinner and invited four of her girlfriends over. What more can I ask for than tasty dinner and five gorgeous women =)
She cooked roasted pears with Gorgonzola, roast duck breast w/ pomegranate seeds & arugula
…butternut squash …and bowtie pasta with vodka emulsion.
Lots of red wine and chocolate Maracaibo mousse cake from Citarella.
Yum, yum! Thank you sweetie! Muah!
Just came across this fabulous piece of journalism and for a moment I thought I was reading The Onion but it’s actually meant to be a serious piece from CNN Money:
It basically bashes Microsoft and Windows 7 in every conceivable way using 12-year-old-mommy-took-my-toys kind of infantile arguments to make a point which… wait, what is the point of this article? I’m asking because after a pagefull of bashing using some random out-of-context statistics it ends with a single positive quote:
“While there are a few bugs, I haven’t seen or heard of any show-stoppers,” said Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC. “In fact, just the opposite. Some Vista users can’t wait to upgrade. So far, this has been a home run for Microsoft.”
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Google, Apple or Microsoft fan: I think you too will find this writing infantile, along with more infantile interviewing of Ballmer and BSOD screenshots from Windows 98(!) inserted in the article. It’s clear that the write-up is not based in reality because it talks about “plug-ins” during installation and calls application included with Windows “applets”. Neither term is to be found in any of the Windows 7 UI.
It makes CNN reporting much like FOX News reporting which is what I’d imagine would happen if you took Jessica Simpson, told her she’s a business analyst anchor for the night and that she gets a cookie for telling the world how bad Microsoft is.
Very very strage to see this low quality reporting… 
But hey, what’s new I guess…
When in trouble save your ass first and don’t try to be a hero
Apparently that’s the lesson to be learned from the recent verdict in the RIAA vs. Joel Tanenbaum lawsuit. Sad, but true.
As reported by ComputerWorld in Judge affirms $675k verdict in RIAA music piracy case:
[U.S. District Court Judge] Gertner said the court would have been willing to consider Tenenbaum’s fair use defense in the case but concluded that the manner in which the arguments were presented by the defense counsel made it all but impossible for her to do so.
“Rather than tailoring his fair use defense to suggest a modest exception to copyright protections, Tenenbaum’s defense mounted a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment,” the judge wrote in a 38-page decision. Such a broad definition of fair use would “swallow” all copyright protections, Gertner said.
So, had Tenenbaum’s defense team narrowed its fair use argument to Tenenbaum’s own activity rather than “mount[ing] a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment,” she would have been willing to consider the argument. Seems to me that Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson was defending Tanenbaum more on ideological grounds than trying to save his student ass. A very Hardvard-esque thing to do perhaps, but a tough lesson to learn.
Google advertising is like Microsoft pre-Windows 7
Recently I’ve been bombarded (while watching The Daily Show) with advertising for phones running Google’s Android OS. These phone were on my short list but the advertising turned me off.
Google, have you learned nothing from Microsoft’s lame advertising in the past years? Your advertising is just as geeky. Your customers are not machines! They are people! You’re effectively telling me these phones are for geeks and robots. And the best feature you have is turn-by-turn directions? Seriously?! Dude, my geeky crappily-designed Windows Mobile phone was giving me turn-by-turn directions three years ago. Let’s see what avenues your competitors are exploring…
See? Cool inspiring music! Connecting with people and audience! (plus you too know just as much about your customers )
The other ads in this campaign are just as cold and geeky, effectively portraying the phone as an alien device (see them in the Verizon Wireless channel). In a recent interview on Fox News, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO says they’ll try not to make the same mistakes Microsoft made (02:55) but in fact they are making the same mistakes around bullying other businesses and lame geeky commercials.
And yes, I do believe the Windows 7 advertising campaign is a successful one. Leading with the customers and leaving your ego behind is always a good thing.
Calling Romania? Use Alonia, not Skype!
I recently became acquianted with Alonia (www.alonia.ro), an IM client and VoIP softphone. On the IM side it can interoperate with the MSN and Yahoo networks. The part the impressed me however is the VoIP softphone (calling phones). It’s unimaginably cheaper than Skype. Calling mobile phone numbers costs €0.06/min or about $0.09/min instead of $0.29/min which Skype charges (among others because it’s written by a Romanian VoIP provider which has great interop deals with the local mobile operators).
One feature Alonia has which I have yet to see in other softphones is, it recognizes when the caller’s mobile phone is switched off or unreachable and it pops up a message box telling you it can’t reach the caller rather that charging you for a full minute just to find out this info. Skype is very dissapointing in this regard. Not only do they not have the feature, but they charge you more than a full minute when you get someone’s voicemail for instance ($0.06 instead of the regular $0.02 for US phone numbers for instance).
Use Alonia!
Windows Update just cost me $10 over coffee
So I’m having a great and productive time working on my laptop from a coffee shop and enjoying the beautiful Spring weather when I notice and Windows Update icon in my system tray telling me it’s downloading updates. Crap!
Why? Because I’m on a modest broadband connection over GSM (or CDMA doesn’t really matter) and I don’t have an unlimited plan. Do you know there’s no way to stop WU from downloading updates once it starts? Crap! I have no idea how big these updates are so I wonder how much is this “initiative” to keep me secure is going to cost me.
In an attempt to keep (l)users secure the WU service starts itself if you kill the process from Task Manager. So really the only way to do something about this is to stop (actually disable) the service from the MMC Computer Management snap-in. I didn’t know that at the moment plus I was in the middle of writing some beautiful code and haven’t really noticed until a significant chunk of the updates (about 20 MB in total) had already downloaded.
Lesson to be learned: WU team, please detect the connection speed and DON’T download updates over a limited/paid-per-KB broadband connection. You cost me real money!
