Business and Economy – On The 8 Spot

December 22, 2009

rePost::7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich

1. “I want to make passive income”
I love when people say this because you can tell they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s kind of like trying to identify people with bad taste: Just go to the local Hometown Buffett. They’re all there.
I hate to say it but most of us don’t need to focus on passive income, we need to focus on improving our active income — our jobs. How? By becoming more skilled, solving more problems for our bosses, and basically out-hustling co-workers.
A lot of people don’t like to hear this because it means that instead of reaching for some dream of $500/day in passive income, they actually have to do some work right now at their jobs. But your job is the most likely place you can significantly increase your income.
via 7 lies we tell ourselves about money | I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

This is an excellent list and should be read !

August 18, 2009

Petron and the Healthcare Debate::The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

When petron was a government owned company, they were able to distort the supply curves because they were in essence the regulatory arm of the government. If the outcry was large enough shell and caltex may increase their prices but petron’s price does not move. What’s interesting in the case of the philippines is that petron was sold to foreign interests and afterwards the oil industry was deregulated. Double whammy to the Filipino people. Our government does not have the balls and probably the manpower to effectively police what is in effect price collusions of oil industry players. The solution is string institutions but I guess that is near impossible for us right now. Buy back petron would be second best with the least amount of complications, although where we are going to get the money, I don’t know. Maybe a few of Pres GMA’s entourage could chip in!

The public option as a signal
Look, it is possible to have universal care without a public option; Switzerland does. But there are some good reasons for the prominence of the public option in our debate.
One is substantive: to have a workable system without the public option, you need to have effective regulation of the insurers. Given the realities of our money-dominated politics, you really have to worry whether that can be done — which is a reason to have a more or less automatic mechanism for disciplining the industry.
via The public option as a signal – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

July 31, 2009

Stupid And Incompetent::Is a mother in labor a child abuser? : Sciencewomen

This is Stupid and Incompetent, I’m all for protecting children from any type of abuse but this is really fucking stupid.

In the case of New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., In the Matter of J.M.G., new mother V.M. was never allowed contact with her daughter and has had her parental rights terminated. And now the decision has been held up on appeal link to the decision. Father B.G. initially had his rights terminated too, but on appeal that decision has been reversed. No word on whether either parent has ever been allowed to see their daughter, who is now 2 years old.
I haven’t been able to get back to original court decision contesting the DYFS decision, but from everything I’ve read, the whole argument against the mother is based on her behavior in the hospital – in labor – with a doctor trying to force a C-section on her. I had a relatively uneventful childbirth experience, but I’m sure some of the same adjectives could be used to describe my behavior at times during the labor.
via Is a mother in labor a child abuser? : Sciencewomen.

June 16, 2009

rePost:How To Disappear:FT.com / Magazine – First Person: Frank Ahearn

There are three key steps to disappearing. First, destroy old information about yourself. Call your video store or electricity company and replace your old, correct phone number with a new, invented one. Introduce spelling mistakes into your utility bills. Create a PO Box for your mail. Don’t use your credit cards and the like.
Then, create bogus information to fool private investigators who might be looking for you. Go to one city and apply for an apartment. Rent a car in another one.
The next, final step is the most important one. Move from point A to point B. Create a dummy company to pay your bills. Only use prepaid mobile phones and change them every month. It is nearly impossible to find out where you are unless you make a mistake.
This is the general rule, but some cases are trickier than others. No problem if you are self-employed, but let’s say you’re a bus driver or a teacher. Then your wages will go on your name. I once had to move a lawyer who was threatened by a former client. Lawyers need a licence. She became a legal consultant.
via FT.com / Magazine – First Person: Frank Ahearn.

April 14, 2009

rePost:Great News:GMANews.TV – Roxas proposes mandatory health coverage for all Filipinos – Nation – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA

: Image via Wikipedia

This is the reason why politicians especially elected officials need to have websites so people can interact with them , they can get input and explain their sides etc etc. hope I can find a copy of this online. Over all without seeing the plan , mandatory health coverage for all is a win, the question is were do we get the money (magbawas muna ng mga mistress and mga politicians) , and is their a more efficient way to administer it than that envisioned in the bill/plan.

Roxas proposes mandatory health coverage for all Filipinos
04/14/2009 | 01:55 PM
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MANILA, Philippines – A bill seeking mandatory health coverage for all Filipinos on state expense has been filed in the Senate.
Senator Manuel Roxas II proposes in Senate Bill 3154 that the government must pay for mandatory entitlement of every Filipino to healthcare benefits under the state’s health insurance program.
He said the immediate and automatic inclusion to Philippine Health Insurance coverage and membership is mandated by Republic Act 7875 (National Health Insurance Act of 1995).
The mandatory universal healthcare coverage shall be funded by the national government through premium payments to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PHIC), which shall be included in the annual General Appropriations Act, he added.
“The health of every Filipino is important. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that our citizens are healthy,” Roxas said.
He said that 48.4 percent of the total P181 billion expenditures for health in 2005 came from individual families’ pockets, and that only 28.7 percent came from government resources.
He said the social health insurance, on the other hand, account for only 11 percent and health expenditure from other sources, such as private health insurance or community-based financing represent only 11.9 percent.
He said that since 26.9 percent of Filipino families are below the poverty threshold, “it is unimaginable how Filipinos who are everyday grappling with the hardships of economic realities, will be able to afford a decent healthcare service for themselves and their families.”
Roxas is also the author of the Cheaper Medicines Act. – Amita O. Legaspi, GMANews.TV
via GMANews.TV – Roxas proposes mandatory health coverage for all Filipinos – Nation – Official Website of GMA News and Public Affairs – Latest Philippine News – BETA.

March 19, 2009

rePost:Business and Snake's Oil Men:Linus' blog: SSD followup

I wrote this yesterday about my take on business and snake’s oil sales men and realize that sometimes they are not trying to fool you into a decision. It is sad but sometimes people don’t try to think things through and investigate the stuff they are trying to say. Here Linus Torvalds shows us why a lot of reviews cannot be trusted, and judging from the way he says this I believe he is even referring to some people who are said to be professional reviewers. Things like this used to make me sad, then I realized that when something becomes useless they tend to become irrelevant to people and they tend to be cast off, like a year old fad. The thing is we need to try to live more aware of things and try to always go beyond what is obvious and easy to get. Do not subscribe to labels and pre conceptions, exercise that which we have that makes us more than animals!

Sadly, almost none of the reviews seemed to ever catch on to that, as they were all looking at the (totally irrelevant) throughput numbers that basically don’t matter in any real-life situation. Everybody just quoted the nice big marketing numbers, because finding the numbers that matter more to actual human perception (notably: average and maximum latency) was so much harder, and most disk benchmarks are crap and don’t even give those numbers.
Which is why I was so happy to see this review at AnandTech. Half the numbers quoted are still the worthless ones (I guess you can’t avoid quoting the industry standard benchmarks, even when they are horribly bad), but much of the actual discussion is about how unusable a drive is when it has maximum latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds.
via Linus’ blog: SSD followup.

March 18, 2009

Learned Today:What I Want For A Business:Seth's Blog: Where have all the agents gone?

A long conversation about two weeks ago with Chuck and Vince was about finding something to do to earn money in our free time. Suffice to say one of my lamer ideas that night was to sell something in sites like multiply and ebay. Just realize that that is not what I want for a business, in fact I realize that even if we did something like that I would not really be satisfied with it.
See, I think I try to find my own way on most things. The paths I take may have been walked by other people but I try to be aware whenever I walk a certain path, its not about originality but about walking the path that is for you.
What irked me about my idea is that I was unwittingly selling out. I wanted to create, I wanted to walk a path for me and I’ve had this long irritation with middle men.
Why? It seems that most middle men/women I encounter can be said to bring little to no value the connection. Let’s take the lot of computer sellers in a mall floor. To protect myself from litigation lets call this mall SharonMall and the mall floor/part as CyberFloor. Using my totally unscientific and totally biased observations and my talent for overhearing a lot of things.
I observed that:

The sellers were basically just a little knowledgeable with their products than the people they are selling to.
The sellers who were really knowledgeable were somewhat aloof, they gave of this vibe that you were stupid trust them.
The best sellers were basically honest and didn’t talk down to their possible customers. (If you’ve watched 40 year old virgin, I believe).
A lot of people valued time and in a way this is logical, but it also meant that a lot of sellers survive on being available for the sale when the more efficient sellers are swamped.

Basically people who are not the best sellers tend to be snakes oil salespeople. I don’t want to be a snake’s oil sales men. I would like something that brings value to this world in a real sense not a rearranging the chairs. I want to create more chairs! I almost forgot that. I am glad even if I forgot about it , my friends have a higher standard than what I have. Cheers!

Middlemen add value when they bring taste or judgment or trust to bear on a transaction that isn’t transparent. Literary agents are crucial when publishers believe that their choice of content is essential but have too many choices and too little time. But publishers don’t trust every literary agent. They trust agents they believe in. Key point: anonymous agents are interchangeable and virtually worthless. Agents that don’t do anything but help one side find the other side in a human approximation of Google aren’t so helpful any more.
Think about how anonymous the typical real estate broker is. He will sell almost any house or represent almost any buyer. When selling a house, he has a fiduciary responsibility to represent that house to the best of his ability. Just like every other broker. The great real estate brokers do far more than this.
via Seth’s Blog: Where have all the agents gone?.

March 8, 2009

rePost:Draconian Anti Internet Free Speech Laws in Thailand:Global Voices Online » Thailand: Web director arrested for “allowing offensive comments”

: Image by longhairthai.com via Flickr

I find te thai a wonderful people full of warmth and hospitality(next to Filipinos). It is sad that the Thai people still live under such draconian oppressive laws, although I understand why there are laws such as these, a kind of command responsibility concept, It is unfortunate that the government does not realize that the price for responsibility is more than the pound of flesh they exact on the service providers . They are stiffling that which makes humans unique. Thought and creativity.

In Thailand, there is a “draconian” computer crime bill that states that any service provider who deliberately let a third party post anything that violates the law is also subject to the same liability as the person who committed the offense. Excerpts from the 2007 Computer Crime Act which the Prachatai editor allegedly violated:
Global Voices Online » Thailand: Web director arrested for “allowing offensive comments”.

March 3, 2009

-rePost-Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street

: Image by SUPERL0L0 via Flickr

Thanks to Paul Wilmott for the pointer here. I learned a lot from this article by Felix Salmon and its somewhat fun to read!

In the world of finance, too many quants see only the numbers before them and forget about the concrete reality the figures are supposed to represent. They think they can model just a few years’ worth of data and come up with probabilities for things that may happen only once every 10,000 years. Then people invest on the basis of those probabilities, without stopping to wonder whether the numbers make any sense at all.
As Li himself said of his own model: “The most dangerous part is when people believe everything coming out of it.”
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street.

March 3, 2009

rePost:Vesess » The Second Age of SMEs

: Image by EssoPics via Flickr

Explains why the authors think that the present financial crisis is the start of the Second Age of SME’s. Excellent read.

Think small. Think efficient. Share the returns.
…
The point we’re trying to make, however, is that in an economic climate like this, only a SME could afford to offer such discounts, and that it is precisely this ability that will enable such businesses to flourish despite the problems we face. For the first time in years, small businesses have the ability to truly shine, and we’d love to hear how some of our fellow players are using small and efficient business practices to attract customers and grow, despite everything going on around them.
Vesess » The Second Age of SMEs.