Ho John Lee’s Weblog

Travelling to Seattle for Gnomedex this morning. Didn’t find a free WiFi connection in Sea-Tac, although the AT&T Wayport service seems to have good coverage in the main atrium (for $7.95 per day).

On the way here, I’ve discovered I’m apparently on a TSA list of some sort. I wasn’t able to use Southwest’s online check in service last night, and the self-serve kiosk at the San Jose airport also wouldn’t let me check in this morning. The customer service agent said that my name hit a “match list” which requires that they check my ID. This is the first time I’ve been unable to use online or self-service check in, my last flight was a few weeks ago, so this seems to be something new.

• Light Blue Touchpaper » Ignoring the “Great Firewall of China”
  Univ. of Cambridge post - routers at the perimeter apparently send connection reset requests to both ends of sessions it doesn’t like. Pointers to related papers and posts.
  (tags: china networking firewall policy privacy society security)

I’m at Barcamp San Francisco for the day. Come by and say hello if you’re around!

• Joyeur - David Young - Leviathan Toys With Zeus, Part I
  Allegorical narrative of recent computing history and the rise of
  (tags: startups webservices server computing technology development trends joyent)
• We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar
  Cool visualization and data exploration project using Processing to navigate through blog postings about how anonymous people on the internet are feeling.
  (tags: visualization information navigation design graphics processing social blogging applications interface art datamining cool fun)

• Fortune - The mad genius Of mutual funds - June 26, 2006
  Interview with Ken Heebner - “I’ve made the most money when my strategy was something few people agreed with. My huge outperformance occurs when I find one of these very contrarian strategies - something supported by a lot of deep analysis - and implement
  (tags: investing strategy stock finance business)
• Inside Higher Ed :: New Arguments on Affirmative Action
  On the widespread use of “negative action,” under which colleges appear to hold Asian American applicants to higher standards than they hold other applicants.
  (tags: asian education society culture k12 college parenting)
• Contrarian Travel in an Age of Terror: Bali High - Observations from recent trips
  On applying investment styles to planning vacation travel - momentum,
  (tags: travel investing culture random)
• WWW2006 - Propagating Trust and Distrust to Demote Web Spam
  Baoning Wu, Vinay Goel, and Brian D. Davison. Review of TrustRank, BadRank, SpamRank, and examines propagation of “distrust” as well as “trust” in graph.
  (tags: search spam google research)

• The Sharpe Ratio
  William F. Sharpe on risk adjusted return, reprint from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Fall 1994
  (tags: quantitative finance statistics stock investing trading)
• Modelling Liquidity and its Effects on Price (PDF)
  L. C. G. Rogers (Univ of Cambridge) and Surbjeet Singh (Univ of Bath)
  (tags: quantitative finance economics markets stock trading risk management math)
• Stochastics on the Street: Models of Liquidity Risk
  On liquidity risk in financial markets
  (tags: economics finance markets risk management stock trading)
• Robert Newman’s History of Oil
  45 minute video of British comedian and activist Robert Newman narrating and commenting on the history of oil, politics, and war.
  (tags: oil video political humor iraq history)

• Tech Trader Daily » Uh-Oh: Signs Grow Of China Cell Phone Slowdown - June 16, 2006
  More on possible slowing mobile handset orders from Eric Savitz in Barrons.
  (tags: mobile wireless china telecom chips stock investing trends)
• IEEE Spectrum: Death by DMCA - June 2006
  on the obstacles to new consumer technologies due to DMCA litigation and legal restrictions on personal use.
  (tags: media copyright drm audio video technology politics law policy)
• Pasadena Star-News - `Phantom’ stock shares lead to civil suit - June 16, 2006
  On failure-to-deliver issues due to naked short selling.
  (tags: stock trading investing sec regulation finance business)
• Negatively Skewed Trading Strategies (PDF) - Glyn A. Holton
  On skewed expectancy trading strategies. “Watch the trader who makes consistent money. He is the one who is going to blow up.”
  (tags: stock bond option trading strategy markets finance)

• Not all successful CEOs are extroverts: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance
  …but the extroverts are paid more on average.
  (tags: business management culture)
• Kidnapped student released unharmed | Jerusalem Post - June 11, 2006
  Apparently not wanting want to start a confrontation with the US this week, student is released by Palestinian gunmen after they discover he is a US citizen, not Israeli.
  (tags: global security terrorism politics israel)
• Fractals of Change: Internet Neutrality – Tough Issue
  Tom Evslin comments on net neutrality debate and the RBOCs.
  (tags: telecom policy politics internet netneutrality)
• Prepare for surprises - Commentary - The Washington Times - June 14, 2006
  James Hackett on the current state of North Korea’s medium range missile program.
  (tags: northkorea korea asia military policy security strategy)

• Bill Cara: “Why Investors Worry about Ben Bernanke” (FINAL) Tues. 6/13/2006 11:23 AM
  “We believe that what traders are worried about is not the inflation pressure in the world today but the misplay by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank on the inflation issue.”
  (tags: global economy economics forecast federal reserve monetary policy investing stock bond forex trading 2006)
• Private Equity Week - VSP Capital Legal Battle Flares Back Up - June 13, 2006
  Messy legal battles among managing partners at VSP.
  (tags: vc privateequity management finance culture)
• Bloomberg.com: Bloomberg Columnists - Mark Gilbert - June 13, 2006
  Commentary on “Hedgestock” and the high correlation and absence of hedging among today’s crop of hedge funds.
  (tags: privateequity hedge fund investing trading strategy finance culture)
• Websites as graphs - an HTML DOM Visualizer Applet
  Creates an interactive graph visualization of your site using the Processing library.
  (tags: visualization web graph design processing)
• Associated Press - Cuban to Finance Stock-Fraud Web Site - June 13, 2006
  On Mark Cuban’s plan to set up a web site to investigate and publish information on corporate fraud, and to trade in advance of publication.
  (tags: stock market finance trading business)
• Victor Adair - Victor’s 22 Absolutely Essential Rules For Trading Success
  Another good list of trading maxims.
  (tags: stock trading business psychology guidelines culture)
• The Stalwart: Handset Supply Exceeding Demand
  JPM analyst Bhavin Shah comments that Nokia and Motorola seem to be reducing manufacturing orders for handsets from Compal.
  (tags: wireless telecom investing chips market forecast 2006)
• Stocks, Futures & Options Magazine - January 2004 - Gaps Force Players to Show Their Hands
  John Carter article on short term opening gap trades, also some discussion on indices vs single issue markets.
  (tags: stock trading market strategy)

Here’s part of a visualization of this site. There are many more site visualizations on Flickr, tagged websitesasgraphs. The applet is written by an artist named Salas, who also has a project to sell one thousand paintings of numbers from 1 to 1000.

Markup tags are mapped to colors.

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

Featuring Kermit, Miss Piggy, and friends. YouTube, via 500 Hats

• ARMED FORCES JOURNAL - Blood borders - June 2006
  Ralph Peters on Middle East borders, how they got there, problems that they cause, and hypothetical “organic” boundaries that might work better. With maps.
  (tags: politics middle east policy history strategy military diplomacy)
• DealBreaker.com: Brazil’s Bond Buyback
  An anecdote about Brazilian bankers making time for the World Cup.
  (tags: bond finance options banking humor worldcup)
• Publius Pundit - Blogging the democratic revolution
  Hugo Chavez wants $10B of flight capital returned to Venezuela, with the threat of domestic property confiscation in reserve.
  (tags: venezuela bolivia southamerica politics investment finance global trade economic risk)

Another fun softball season ended this Saturday.

I’ve been on flights through bumpy weather many times, but am happy to have missed this one. The nosecone (which houses the radar) came off, and there were cracks and holes in the wings and windshield.

‘’I could not see anything through the front windows because they were shattered. So I checked side windows when I tried to land the plane.'’

All 200 passengers, including 177 elementary school kids, were uninjured.
Link, with video. (Reuters)

• Bill Cara: Did Buffett or money managers have a good afternoon?, Fri., June 9, 2006, 6:28 AM
  Followup to Bill’s speculation on Warren Buffett in yesterday’s reversal.
  (tags: stock trading markets finance business)

• Counterterrorism Blog: Contributing Experts’ Posts on the al-Zarqawi Network
  Roundup of posts on al-Zarqawi activities.
  (tags: global terrorism iraq security politics)
• Counterterrorism Blog: The demise of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, courtesy of Task Force 145 (with airstrike video)
  Roundup of posts on airstrike on al-Zarqawi June 8, 2006.
  (tags: global security military iraq terrorism politics)
• Bill Cara: So what happened today, people asked?, Thurs., June 8, 2006, 11:39 PM
  Bill Cara takes a close look at the mid day reversal of today’s market selloff and may have found Warren Buffett’s footprints.
  (tags: stock trading investing finance markets 2006)
• Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog: Zarqawi is gone, but there will be others–and that is only natural in this Long War
  An excerpt from Barnett’s book, on the transition from mass warfare against nation-states to personalized warfare against connected individuals in ideological, political, and terrorist movements.
  (tags: global security military policy politics strategy iraq)

Would you rather be “right” or be successful?

Changing your mind about an investment - intellectual, emotional, or financial - is difficult.

Munjal Shah, founder and CEO of photo search company Riya, has been writing a series of posts narrating his experience over the past few months getting his startup off the ground. Highly recommended reading for entrepreneurs and others with an interest in startups, online web services and software applications.

In startups and other forms of investing, it’s common to have a vision or thesis guiding your decisions. Technology companies, and especially technology startups, tend to be big on vision, which can be helpful in achieving internal alignment and for building external awareness among potential customers and partners. It can give everyone a common sense of purpose or mission, and can sometimes take on a religious or political tone (i.e. Apple fanatics, the first Internet Boom, George Gilder’s Telecosm, or lately “Web 2.0″).

• data.inetats.com - Home Page
  Data services available from NASDAQ / Instinet, including free REST-style web service for market data, order book, and applets for viewing live quote data.
  (tags: nasdaq stock trading data webservices api documentation software development)
• EETimes.com - 2006 chip market to grow 9.8%, says SIA
  Semiconductor Industry Association raises its industry sales forecast for 2006 to 9.8%. Highest growth forecast in flash memory at 20% growth for 2006.
  (tags: semiconductor chip business forecast 2006 sia investing)
• EETimes.com - Gartner sees IC slowdown, consolidation
  Gartner’s forecast for 2006 is 10.6% sales growth, vs 9.8% from SIA. However, they also think that 10% of current chip companies will fail or be taken over.
  (tags: semiconductor chip market forecast 2006 business investing)

• Summer 2006: NYC, CNBC, Cramer, etc.
  Blog by an intern at Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show for the summer
  (tags: jimcramer cnbc intern stock trading media finance culture blog)
• Re-Engineering the Ark - Fortean Times
  Speculation on the Ark of the Covenant and its temple as a very large Leyden jar and static electricity generator, with glowing cherubim effect and blue sparks.
  (tags: random ancient history culture bible engineering)
• Hack Attack: Turn your $60 router into a $600 router - Lifehacker
  Directions for installing DD-WRT firmware on Linksys WRT54G wireless router for enhanced features using embedded Linux.
  (tags: wireless router hardware hacking linux networking howto linksys wrt54g wifi vpn)
• Ten Products Google Should Develop
  Google seems to be trying just about anything plausible. Here’s someone’s list of ten more ideas, some more likely than others.
  (tags: google product ideas webservices search fun)

• Big buyers of gold slip under radar - Business - Business - smh.com.au
  Long term funds and investors are accumulating larger gold allocation than previously thought, independent of short term speculators.
  (tags: gold metals investment finance)
• The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO - Wal-Mart’s data center remains mystery - May 28, 2006
  About Wal-Mart’s 125000 sq ft data center in Jane, Missouri.
  (tags: walmart privacy retail database business security culture)
• The Boy Who Heard Music
  Pete Townshend (of the Who) writes a blog, in addition to his commercial web site.
  (tags: blogs music who rock culture media celebrity)
• Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Intelligence behind raid was wrong, officials say
  Follow up article on the raid on a suspected chemical weapons house last week - bad information?
  (tags: global security terrorism uk policy society privacy)
• Canadian suspects targeted Ottawa, Toronto: media - Yahoo! News
  Unlike the UK raid, the suspects in the Canadian raid last week really were trying to blow up various landmarks such as Parliament, Toronto Stock Exchange, CN Tower, and Peace Tower
  (tags: global terrorism canada security policy culture)
• Americans Killed in Action, Numbers, American War Library
  Table of casualties and costs for all US wars from the American Revolution through Afghanistan and Iraq.
  (tags: us military war costs history society economics reference)
• myDaVinci - Artworks.
  Service that creates custom versions of famous art such as Mona Lisa, merging in your own face from photos.
  (tags: fun art culture photo gifts random)
• The Day That Nothing Happened
  Essay on Wal-Mart in China, the rising middle class vs economically left behind, Tienanman Square.
  (tags: china culture society walmart)