Dan Tohatan

Too Much Cow Manure

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 06:37:15 GMT

There is a channel on YouTube called TheYoungTurks. Watch a few of their videos. They are nothing more than a rehash of the mainstream media (NBC, CBS, etc.). Yet that channel has 203 million views. It got me thinking... 203 million! That is probably more than NBC or FOX news! The channel spews out nothing but the same elitist rhetoric seen on mainstream news channels, but with a more light-hearted "comedic" approach.

203 million views. What does that say about the numb ignorance of Americans? No wonder they elected Obama. Were they completely blind to the blatant machinations that led to Obama's triumphant election victory? Or perhaps the genetically modified beef from cattle raised ankle-deep in their own feces has finally managed to alter the brain chemistry of the average American enough to keep them forever ignorant of the blatant abuse to which they are subjected every day, preferring instead to watch mediocre comedy mocking their stupidity, rather than wising up and examining the real dark world which they now inhabit.

It's time to wake up, America. The world ain't pretty. Your country is falling apart. It's not Alice in Wonderland, and the American Dream is the American Nightmare. Perhaps my cries will never be heard, perhaps all of the warnings issued by countless people will fall silently upon the dumb masses. No matter what, I can say with certainty that the only thing that surprises me these days is the profound stupidity of the average American.

I was in Virginia Beach. It was August, 2008, just months before the elections. I asked a random person who they were planning to vote for in the elections. The response I got was startling: Rudy Giuliani. Or maybe Hillary Clinton. They were undecided. That is the stupidity with which a small minority of Americans are battling. The machine that produced this stupidity is the same one that worships it every chance it gets. It's the US media. It's the super-giants, ultra-giants, the Rupert Murdochs, the three-letter channels that all look so familiar yet so intimidating in their grandeur.

I admit I am not the most informed person who can pass judgment on these sorts of issues, but I believe I have enough knowledge at this point to realize that without a free press, you cannot have an informed population. And without an informed population, you cannot have fair elections. You cannot have democracy.

The press is the most powerful instrument of a democracy. Most people are too lazy to research things for themselves. Most will happily accept whatever Brian Williams tells them is the truth. The media can create such indecision that people will literally go to bed the night before the elections not knowing who they will vote for. How do they do that?

It is not solely the media's fault, but it does bear the majority of the responsibility. The non-choice is ensured from the very beginning. The contenders that could challenge the system are immediately weeded out by instilling powerful negative images in the media. Candidates like Ron Paul are smeared and declared to be "cooks" or "nuts". There is a powerful machinery involved in the pre-decision process, involving selection of facts, creation of talking points, and so forth. By the time the average American is ready to vote in the primaries, the media images are permanently perforated into their skulls.

There is one way to fight the system, and it's relatively simple: start learning things on your own. Unfortunately, the vast masses of ignorant Americans choose to remain ignorant. There are now powerful forces outside the media working to ensure that Americans remain ignorant, including vaccines, genetically-modified foods, synthetic foods, drugs, etc. A whole environment is created to keep the American ignorant, obedient, childish, and lazy. This cycle cannot be broken without major efforts, and therefore is rarely broken.

The elite have a grand plan to save themselves and screw everybody else. They literally believe themselves to be genetically superior to the "dumb masses." They consider the dumb masses to be "cannon fodder, to be used as pawns in foreign policy." The elite are insane and have to be stopped.

For the average dumb American, I have a simple one-step program for how we can all stop this madness: non-cooperation. Simply stop delegating your power to these elite. Take back your money. Take money from the bank and put it in gold. Ask your employer to pay you in gold or silver. Stop dealing in fraudulent paper currency. Stop buying things made overseas. Get to know your local farmer. Trade silver for food. Trade labor for food. Barter becomes your new religion. Only deal with those who in turn are not co-operating with the system. If you encounter a police officer or other public official, educate them about the deep government corruption, and how they can subvert this corruption by not cooperating with unjust laws or mandates. And most importantly - vote. Make an informed vote, and choose the candidate who is aware of everything I just said and has a proven record of not cooperating with the system. This is how we can start to create our own reality, outside the corrupt power system imposed by the elite with our permission.

Last but not least, ignorance is bliss only as long as you've still got a roof over your head. Those who take the steps now to begin non-cooperation will be much less impacted by the social collapse which is coming. Become informed and inform others. Stop cooperating with the system. It's hard, but unfortunately it is the only way that we can take back power.

Einstein said it best: "There are two things that are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Buy two lottery tickets every week for the rest of your life

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:35:49 GMT

This was originally posted over on my other blog (thelogicspace.blogspot.com) but I think it's important enough to post it here as well...

"
I've recently developed a phrase I like to use to remind myself to take the time to invest in myself. It's called "Play to Win": You've got to PLAY to WIN. Think of the lottery: you MIGHT win IF you play, but you CERTAINLY won't win if you don't play.

You've got to think as if every action you take will result in the most spectacular success even if it won't. Think of yourself as if you're constantly buying lottery tickets. Every minute you spend is productive only if it has resulted in you buying another lottery ticket. This idea is also sometimes called "planting seeds." In the sense that, a tree will not grow unless you plant a seed. Planting a seed takes very little time, but could potentially result in a big reward later on.

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "this is a waste of time. It hasn't worked before, so why would it ever work?" I find myself thinking that a lot. When I release a new product, when I write a new blog article, I think that constantly, because I don't want to feel like I'm wasting time.

Whenever you find yourself thinking that something is a waste of time, you've got to ask yourself two things:
1. What have you got to lose?
2. What have you got to win? What is the biggest potential win?

If the potential win (regardless of probability) is large enough, and the potential loss is almost insignificant (e.g. a few minutes of your time), then why not do it?

You would happily buy a lottery ticket every week. Yet in all logic that seems like wasted money & time. But it's not. You have to apply this same idea to every action that you take. Invest in your future. Plant seeds. Play to win -- emphasis on the "play" part.
"

So now you should understand why you must buy two lottery tickets every week for the rest of your life. I'll be doing that starting this week. It's less than the cost of two subway rides, but the payout could be substantial. I plan to play only when the jackpot exceeds $10 million. I think that's a big enough payoff to be able to retire and live well, but any less than that doesn't seem worth it to me.

Interesting fact: if you buy two lottery tickets every week for 50 years, your chances of winning lotto 6/49 are 1 in 2700 lifetimes. On the other hand, if you never play, your odds are ZERO. I'll take 1 in 2700.

Ominous Sign: SEC Restricts Short Selling, Again

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:34:59 GMT

Last week, the SEC voted in favour of limiting short selling on stocks that have fallen by more than 10%. This latest move echoes previous attempts by the SEC in 2008 to limit short selling, during the collapse that occurred in September and October of 2008.

Are we in for another stock market crash?

While it's impossible to say with certainty, I think this is an ominous sign that we may be headed for another rapid decline in the US stock market over the coming months. We've certainly had the longest recovery rally since the Great Depression. No uptrend lasts forever, and when this one turns around, we can expect nothing less than a spectacular and terrifying decline.

I think it's a matter of weeks before some major downward moves in the stock market. The probability of a crash is high enough to warrant evasive action.

Japan's Deflation Explained

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:23:27 GMT

Here's a handy chart that explains exactly why Japan had "deflation" for nearly 30 years, and why the US will not experience deflation anytime soon...

Original Article: US Not Going Down Japan's Road (Safe Haven)

I suggest you read that article for more in-depth analysis. Here's my quick summary:

Look how slowly Japan's M2 grew from 1992 until 2004. The average rate of growth is just 2%.

How can you have inflation without monetary expansion? You can't. Japan clearly proves it.

So when you hear a deflationista argue that Japan pumped money relentlessly into the economy, that is simply not true. If they had done that, there would have been inflation. But they didn't.

Now look at the US. Different story entirely. The US money supply expanded at a rate of nearly 10% in 2008.

Bottom line, watch the money supply. If it grows, inflation will soon follow. It's a law of nature. Like gravity. You can't argue against it and make it go away.

Update: It turns out in 2009 the US money supply (M2) only expanded by about 2%. Could this be the start of a long term trend, or just a temporary anomaly?

Toronto residents must earn minimum of $35,000 per year

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 19:35:52 GMT

Toronto residents must pocket $35,000 per year just to stay afloat.

Yes. Anyone in Toronto who is earning less than $35,000 (net) per year is falling behind and will be unable to retire.

This shocking conclusion is based on a careful calculation of required retirement savings based on the cost of living. In Toronto, the typical cost of living is $2000 per month (including food & housing).

For someone who earns $35,000 per year, what is left over after paying off living expenses is just $10,000.

Now, assuming you are 25 and plan to work until 60, that means you can save up $350,000. Assuming you've paid off the mortgage at 60 and your living expenses are reduced by $1200, to $800 per month, that amount will allow you to last 36 years.

That should be just enough to get you to age 96.

The math is more forgiving if you increase the retirement age from 60 to 65, or to 70. However, even if you were planning to work until 70, you would still need to save up $6,000 per year for every year you work (assuming you start saving at 25).

Even in this most forgiving case, you would still need to earn a net income of $31,000 per year. Still very close to $35,000 per year.

How much is $35,000 per year in terms of gross salary? $45,000. Yes, $45,000. That's $23 per hour based on a 40-hour work week with two weeks vacation. $23 is more than double the minimum wage.

Effectively, $23/hr ought to be the minimum wage in Toronto, because it's impossible to get ahead on anything less than that (unless you continue living with your parents).

Do Repeat Yourself... If It's Easy

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:34:18 GMT

Here's an article I've posted over on my other blog. It's worth a look so I'm cross-linking it here:

Do Repeat Yourself... If It's Easy

"How many times have you thought of a great idea only to discover that somebody else has already done it?"

(read the full article)

Upward Mobility is Dead: How persistent unemployment will shape the next decade

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:11:20 GMT

This is a follow-up article to this majestic piece of writing: How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America (The Atlantic)

After reading the above article, a few ideas popped into my head which may not be known to the writer, given that the writer (and his/her sources) are probably members of an older generation. However, since I am a member of the so-called "generation Y" or the "echo boom" generation, I may be able to shed some light on what I am thinking (and maybe what other members of my generation are thinking) with respect to this issue.

First, it's evident at this point that the idea of upward mobility - the idea that you could work your way up the corporate ladder - is no longer an idea that can be embraced. It is far too risky. It used to be that if you worked hard enough, you would eventually end up in a highly-prestigious position, earning lots of money, and having a fair amount of authority (all of which are highly potent aphrodisiacs to undisciplined individuals).

OK, I said a mouthful so let's backtrack a little. What is an "undisciplined individual"? Put simply, all humans have instincts and most humans make decisions solely based on feeling (emotion), rather than rational thought. In basic sociology, a human has several aphrodisiacs which elevate his/her sense of self-worth. These are (to name a few): power, wealth, and social status. Most individuals act as robots seeking these three aphrodisiacs for their entire lives. Unless you are aware of this fact of nature and discipline yourself to be content with seeking happiness in other forms, you are considered an "undisciplined individual," who is purely seeking to maximize one's social status, power, and/or wealth. The vast majority of Americans are what I consider "undisciplined individuals."

Now, believe it or not, there are many people in the world who define themselves largely by the position they hold, or by the organization in which they are members. This is one way you can define yourself, but what happens when you lose your position, or the organization you are in collapses and you're left without a position? It is my belief that if you define yourself in such a way, you will suffer enormous emotional scars resulting from your "break-up" with your organization. In fact, it is almost identical to the break-up of a marriage. In a sense, many people are "married" to their jobs.

So what is the antidote to this madness? And why do I consider it "madness"? Well, it's madness because first of all, you are probably not a founder of the organization in which you are a member. Quite probably you have a very low-ranking position within that organization and even more probably you will never reach the level of power / control that the founding member has. That's number one. Number two, it's madness because in this economic environment, anybody can be fired from any position for any reason (or no reason at all!). While this has always been the case to some extent, it is only now that it is happening on a mass scale, reaching levels where the risk of being fired from a position to which you are married actually exceeds the benefit of "becoming married" to that position.

So what is the antidote to the madness? You have to think clearly and look at the facts. The facts are that these worker-organization relationships are becoming increasingly more transient. This idea was put forth by Alvin Toffler in his 1970 book "Future Shock," in which he describes a condition where relationships (of any kind) become increasingly more transient in the not-too-distant future. This has come to pass in the form of increased divorce rate as well as increased job insecurity. I think there is no question at this point that Toffler was right and that this trend will continue for a long time.

So given all that, it is far more rewarding to think of yourself in terms OTHER THAN your relationships with other organizations. When I look at myself, I value myself based on my ability to solve problems creatively, or by my ability to think logically. These are attributes that are fundamental to survival, but which have been almost eternally ignored at the societal level. I believe these attributes are far more fundamental than anything else. You need to define yourself based on your fundamental attributes that make you a resilient individual in the face of any natural or environmental situation. Always avoid the trap of thinking that your identity is defined by what others think of you. This is a fundamental shift in mentality that needs to occur on a massive scale. This shift is what separates a "disciplined individual" from an "undisciplined individual." We, as humans, need to become far more self-disciplined and far more aware of the destructive aphrodisiacs I mentioned earlier.

As an aside, two things I try to avoid constantly are:
1. Believing (or becoming attached to) others' opinions of me.
2. Following popular beliefs or behaviors unquestioningly.

Coming back to the idea that upward mobility is dead, imagine you start out your career as a Walmart cashier. Then, 20 years later you're back at Walmart as a cashier. If you grew attached to the idea that you would advance over time, you would be devastated to find yourself 20 years later in exactly the same position. However, if you defined yourself by other characteristics which may not be as socially respectable (yet) as the idea of career advancement, you would be relatively unaffected by your career path, however erratic it may be. It is an idea from many oriental religions which must be embraced: "avoid attachment to things which are invariably transient."

Sadly, many are refusing to accept the new reality and construct a belief system which is more consistent with it. Instead, it appears that many are resorting to having children as a way to escape their insecurities and gain social approval. It's understandable that we are social beings. And it requires an enormous shift in thought patterns in order to avoid the common traps that cause us to do undesirable things purely for social approval. Yet, in order to evolve as a species, we must engage in precisely this sort of detachment from the base aphrodisiacs that have driven society for generations. So if you find yourself unemployed, become a Buddhist monk. It's a step in the right direction.

To close off, I will give one last example which illustrates what can happen when jobs disappear but the parasitic aphrodisiacs of power and social approval remain. In Philadelphia, white neighborhoods are now becoming increasingly black. White males, who have held blue-collar and even white-collar jobs have now been unemployed for years. Some are now resorting to precisely the same kind of behavior that blacks have been struggling with for decades: fathers abandoning their children, drug dealing, violent crime, and domestic violence. This is all because, fundamentally, blacks are no different from whites. It is only the economic circumstances which produce a difference. Now that the differences in economic circumstances between blacks and whites are beginning to narrow, we are seeing a convergence in terms of behavior patterns. Unfortunately, this convergence is happening in the wrong direction: instead of blacks becoming more affluent, whites are becoming poor.

All too often, persistent widespread poverty results in a loss of dignity among members of a society. This is certainly understandable, but there are many societies which, by our definitions of wealth, are extremely poor. Yet, these societies are very cohesive and peaceful. We do not have to go through a break-up of society as a whole as a result of increased overall poverty. In fact, the society of the 1930s was very cohesive and generally in good spirits. People helped each other. We should work toward a healthier society, by valuing those things which are fundamental to survival: knowledge, and creative problem solving, rather than those things which are the primal aphrodisiacs of undisciplined individuals.

13% of US population on food stamps

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:23:01 GMT

The latest food stamp report is out: 38 million people in the US are now (October, 2009) on food stamps.
Here is the stunning part: "an increase of nearly 6.9 million people compared with the prior October."

Questions arise:
- How is it that 38 million people in the US are on food stamps yet only about 20 million are considered unemployed?
- 7 million more people are on food stamps now than in the fall of 2008. Where is Obama's recovery?
- What are the social consequences of having one eighth of the US population on food stamps?

For the social consequences, I will write up another blog post shortly, as things are quite troubling.

Why C++ Sucks (Part 2)

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:41:33 GMT

Recap

First of all, let me clarify that I think C is a great language and excellent for the development of low-level system software. I think C++, specifically, adds an extra unnecessary layer of complexity which makes it less suitable for low-level work but in some cases it's the only option. I would readily choose C over C++ for low-level software projects (e.g. drivers).

When dealing with C code, I would aim to write as little code in C as possible and provide an interface for writing the remainder of my code in another "safer" language, such as C# or Java. By "safe" here I mean something that is detached from the OS, so that it has a lower risk of corrupting the system's memory or file system upon failure. Again, C# and Java run in virtual machines which provide an extra layer of safety should things go horribly horribly wrong. The layer of safety may not be perfect, but it's better than having no layer of safety at all.

Also, when I said C++ sucks (sort of), I meant that C++ sucks for most types of applications (e.g. GUI or web applications). There are some cases where C++ is a decent choice, but those cases are rare and limited in scope. For the most part, C++ is just plain awful, because it consumes more time and produces more lines of code than either C# or Java. It also induces programmers to produce substandard code and has the inherent property of creating very difficult-to-debug code.

There are certainly cases where using C++ is unavoidable. When such a case arises, it does not usually mean that C++ as a language is in some way superior. It just means that C++ is not completely useless. I still write C++ code occasionally, because I have to.

The Debate Goes On

Recently I came across an article that attempts to refute my claim that, in most cases, C++ sucks.

I have a couple of remarks related to that article:

"What do you do when writing cross-platform code in C and you need to make heavy use of the filesystem?"

I assume by "heavy use" here you mean low-level operations. In that case, you need to make a file system driver in C (or whatever language the OS supports for drivers) and expose APIs that can easily be called from a higher-level Java or C# client application. Again, minimize the integration between high-level application code and low-level driver code.

"On that note, nobody, and I mean nobody should be using C++ without Boost"

If that is the case, why is Boost not a feature of C++? Maybe it will make its way into C++0x? The very fact that Boost exists indicates that C++ is a deficient language. Boost is merely a patch over those deficiencies. And when I talk about C++, I'm also referring to the standard library as well as the language itself.

"I guess the author has never worked on embedded software or real time systems. Or games for that matter. Or I guess anything other than canned business software."

Actually I have built games using DirectX in the past. I can confidently say that C++ was not needed for any feature. Given the extra time that C++ adds to the development of any app, being able to use any other language (and minimize the use of C++) is quite important.
Here is a simple 3D demo I built with OpenGL and Java in 4 intensive days of coding: http://www.dacris.com/article.aspx?name=demos. I probably would not have been able to perform such a feat with C++.

"C++ has a keyword called sizeof() that lets you determine how big a pointer is."

Again, that's nice, but I'd rather not use pointers and not write sizeof() statements all over the place. The time I save by not thinking about pointers (and by not reading code that contains pointers) is enormous.

"Perhaps an even better answer is in order though. I won't use any Gui toolkit, because I won't develop GUI code in C++. Why would I use the language for something which it doesn't excel at?"

Exactly. If you're content with building console applications, use C++. No problem. But for any kind of UI, C++ just sucks.

"C++ has a very strong, flexible type system."

Flexible, yes. But the problem is it's also lacking some very useful features compared to C# or Java. For example, how do you enumerate a class's fields or properties in C++? How do you detect that class A inherits class B at runtime, or get an object's type at runtime? In C# this is called "reflection." There is nothing like it in C++. For this reason, it's very difficult to do generalized serialization in C++. In C# and Java you can literally serialize any type.

"Code generation"

I can't think of any reason why you would ever want this. Macros and templates are a symptom of bad design. Instead of using code generation to deal with repetitive code, why not build a reusable component? Generated code is hard to maintain, hard to understand, hard to verify, and hard to debug.

Write as Little Code as Possible

Let me end by saying, I'm not a "substandard programmer." I'm merely a lazy programmer. I like to write as little code as possible. I keep track of the lines of code in all my projects, to make sure that number stays low. I guess if I was paid by KLOC I'd be pretty broke.

Mediocrity: The Lifeblood of Modern Businesses

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:49:28 GMT

Have you ever woken up one morning thinking you deserve a raise? Well, if you think logically, if your performance has been excellent (praised by your boss), you'd think you definitely deserve a raise. Not quite. This type of logic no longer applies in today's business environment. Shocked? Confused? Don't worry - I'll elaborate.

Imagine a stellar employee, praised often by his/her manager, is working at a salary of $60,000/yr and gets called into the manager's office for a talk. The talk is about how the employee is exceeding the employer's expectations and the employer wants to assign the employee duties that will be more challenging and possibly more useful for the business. The employee is certainly excited, thinking he/she might end up getting a raise. The employer finally reveals the key figure: the salary. It's $45,000/yr and requires that the employee sign some additional restrictive agreements that are not applicable in the employee's current position.

Is the employee being promoted or demoted?

From the employer's perspective, the employee is being promoted. Duties are being expanded and greater responsibility is placed on the employee. But, from the employee's standpoint, things are not quite so rosy. The employee sees a decrease in salary, and an increase in work and in restrictions. What benefit is there for the employee? ... Give up? There is no benefit!

That's right, the employee is being demoted for achieving excellent performance. Outstanding performance is being punished rather than rewarded. I would be willing to bet that this is happening in a lot of companies these days. In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's becoming a market-wide phenomenon.

So don't be shocked if an employer offers you a demotion for exceeding expectations. The world is, as they say, a little more complicated than it appears to be. This paradox is, like most paradoxes, a mind-boggling one. And its implications are huge. It means that the best employees are those who walk the fine line between doing too little and doing too much. They are those who stay inside the box, and live a life of mediocrity.

In the world of business, mediocrity is rewarded. Creativity is punished. I've just given a concrete example based on personal experience. Yes, it's based on a true story. When you add it all up, isn't it better to just mind your own business?

Windows 7 on Older PCs

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:24:58 GMT

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage users of old PCs (pre-2005) to take extra precautionary steps before installing Windows 7.

Otherwise, you could end up baking your hardware. Yes, baking, in the oven.

How I ended up baking my laptop:

I installed Windows 7 on an older Toshiba laptop (from 2004) with a GeForce Go 5200 graphics card. First, it was not recognized - Windows 7 actually decided to use the Standard VGA Adapter driver for the card, which forced me down to 1024x768 resolution and extremely slow rendering. Well, I decided to look for a driver. Toshiba didn't have one on their site, NVIDIA no longer supports the 5xxx series, so I ended up finding a shaky third-party (modded) driver and modded it a bit myself to get it to actually recognize my card.

So after all that, I installed the custom modded driver and it seemed to work great at first: I even had Aero Glass! But little did I know there was a major problem lurking in the shadows... A few days after installing the new driver, I start up the laptop and it starts displaying columns of random flashing characters (at the BIOS screen). Immediately I concluded that this was a video card problem - it had happened to me before, with a GeForce 4 Ti4200 card.

Great, so now I had a dead video card. I looked around the web for people who had experienced the same problem, and found one who took his laptop to a repair shop and the technicians there diagnosed it as a "BGA failure." So I looked for BGA-related problems and found what seemed to be a re-occurring theme on various forums: "bake at 375*F for 5-10 mins". Surprisingly, those who tried it said it actually worked!

But how does it work? The BGA (Ball Grid Array) is what a video chip is most often connected to. This thing is just an array of tiny balls of solder that can melt at very low temperatures (even 120*C). When the video chip gets insanely hot (like over 100*C), it can warp the BGA so much that the chip disconnects from the balls and you end up with the problem I had (random characters at the BIOS screen). The solution, apparently, is to heat up the entire PCB (in this case the motherboard) evenly at a high temperature, so that the solder melts and reattaches itself to the chip. The prescription, in my case, was to bake at 375*F for 7 minutes.

Of course, I had to remove anything that might melt or explode - like batteries. I made sure to remove even the CMOS battery and remove all attachable parts (RAM, hard drive, etc.). I only baked the actual motherboard. But at the end, it worked! The video is fixed now, thanks to BGA baking!

The problem was caused by Aero Glass overheating my card. I'm 99.9% sure of it. And I'm also 99.9% sure that's why NVIDIA doesn't have any official Vista / 7 drivers for it. So immediately when I booted up my laptop after baking, I booted straight into Safe Mode, removed the graphics driver, and rebooted into Windows 7. Then, I reinstalled the graphics driver and made sure I was on the Windows 7 Basic theme, without Aero Glass. I also disabled the DWM service, so that there is no freak occurrence where Aero Glass gets re-enabled.

Precautionary steps that would've saved my behind:

Like I was saying, with Windows 7 on older hardware it's very important to take a few extra precautionary steps:

Run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. Ensure that your essential hardware (the stuff you can't boot up without) is supported.
Take an inventory of your hardware. For me, the easiest way to do this was to just run Dacris Benchmarks (version 8.0) and create an HTML report under the System Information tab. This makes it much easier to find drivers online when everything in Device Manager is listed as "Unknown." But, if you have perfect memory, you don't need to do this.
Make sure you download any necessary network adapter drivers before you install Windows 7. Otherwise, you won't have Internet access. Usually the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor will tell you if you need to do this, but do it even if it doesn't tell you - just in case - unless you have another PC connected to the Internet and a USB key.
For hardware that is shown as not compatible in Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, try to find official Windows Vista drivers for it. If no official Windows Vista drivers exist, and the device is essential, you may want to reconsider upgrading to Windows 7.
For software that is shown as not compatible in Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, try to find a newer version online that supports Windows Vista. If no such version exists, and the software is essential, you can still upgrade to Windows 7 but the software will probably need to be run in XP Mode. While XP mode is great, there are some things it can't do - like Direct3D. So if the software in question is a game, you may want to keep Windows XP. In that case, I would recommend dual-booting Windows 7 and Windows XP.

Now, in fairness, I couldn't have run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor on that Toshiba laptop I mentioned, because it had no working OS at the time (the reason I installed Windows 7 was because XP died). I should've really just reinstalled XP and then run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

A side note - hardware manufacturers (especially NVIDIA) have failed us:

While I was thinking about baking my graphics card, I had a thought: was it really the fact that Vista had such a different driver model that caused hardware manufacturers to produce unreliable drivers? Did hardware manufacturers really not have enough time to adapt to Vista? I remember Microsoft in 2005 mentioned that any PC made in 2005 or later would be able to run Windows Vista. So hardware manufacturers in fact had 2 years to produce Vista drivers. The Vista development cycle lasted 5 years. Plenty of time for IHVs to get involved, learn the Vista driver model, and develop drivers in consultation with Microsoft.

So who really failed here? Microsoft? Was NVIDIA's discontinuation of support for the GeForce 5xxx line a Microsoft decision? Who is to blame for NVIDIA's inability to produce drivers? I would say it's NVIDIA that's to blame here. I've had so many NVIDIA cards fail on me: I witnessed a friend's NVIDIA card go up in flames, literally, then my own NVIDIA card did the same thing! Then, I had an older NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti card that died with the classic BGA failure, then I had this latest failure: another NVIDIA card. That's four NVIDIA cards, three of which were mine. So out of all the NVIDIA cards I've ever had (about 5), only two remain. Now, I've had my share of ATI cards (roughly 5) and not a single one has ever failed. Not one.

Sorry NVIDIA, but I'm afraid I must buy ATI cards from now on. Sure, NVIDIA's drivers are more polished, and sometimes NVIDIA wins in terms of performance, but the cards rarely last very long. I would urge anyone who is thinking of purchasing an NVIDIA card to think twice and consider the ATI alternative, and think of which card you'd most likely have to bake. Now, of course, if you like baking, NVIDIA is your friend. :)

Windows 7 Smartphone to be Revealed at Mobile World Congress

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:26:41 GMT

Microsoft is keeping unusually quiet about their mobile strategy these days. From the various stories I've been reading on the Internets, it looks like MSFT is set to announce a major breakthrough at the Mobile World Congress next month that has the potential to be an iPhone killer.

My prediction: The first Windows 7 smartphone will be announced at the Mobile World Congress, along with APIs for smartphone programming on Windows 7 that match the APIs provided by Apple for the iPhone.

But, we'll just have to see...

Technology Innovations of the Last Decade

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 05:28:05 GMT

KEY TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS OF THE 2000s THAT MOST OF US USE EVERY DAY:
- LCD monitors and TVs
- Solid State Drives (SSDs)
- Cloud computing
- Wireless networking (WiFi/802.11g)
- Multi-core processors
- USB flash drives
- Streaming audio / video
- Torrents
- Online game consoles
- Touch screens
- Bluetooth

KEY TECHNOLOGIES THAT DIED IN THE 2000s:
- Floppy disks
- CRT displays
- Modems
- DOS games
- VHS tapes

PREDICTED TRENDS FOR 2010s:
- Software development re-focuses on hardware limitations & performance optimization (yes, hardware is still very limited!)
- Streaming 3D - enormous worlds with terabytes of content loaded from the web in real-time on your mobile phone or gaming console
- Pen-like computers & 3D glasses - this is the next logical combination of input/output devices overtaking the old PC & monitor
- Popular novels become 3D-ified - entertainment now puts YOU in an immersive 3D world of fantasy - be on Mars battling aliens
- Enhanced vision - while you wear 3D glasses, your PC will see the real world for you in many ways: real, infrared, X-ray, and so on
- The OpenWorld3D project: a perfect online replica of the entire Earth as a 3D world (with buildings, streets, cars, weather, etc.)
- Collaborative 3D modeling online - 3D model wikis are born: allowing the online community to build 3D models collaboratively, online
- 3D will be THE buzzword of the decade, like "online" was for the last decade; expect highly immersive & realistic 3D worlds
- Flexible paperlike screens allow creation of rollable (and maybe even foldable) tablet PCs and phones - OLED will make this happen
- The data web: a computer-friendly version of the entire world wide web, allowing greater sharing of data between sites
- The Internet goes 3D: toward the end of the decade, expect more and more websites to be full-blown 3D worlds

Quick! How many times did I mention 3D?

Savings = Power

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:56:55 GMT

It was about 4 years ago when I started saving money for the first time. I opened an ING Direct savings account. Didn't know what I was going to do with it all, but I knew one thing: nobody was saving their money. There had to be a reason. Not only that, but saving was frowned upon. It still is. "Live your life, man!" is what everybody would say. But no. I was saving every penny.

At times, I found it somewhat absurd. Why should I keep saving? What's the point? Why not live for today? Life is short, after all. But I kept saving. I decided to treat it like an experiment. I wanted to find out where it would take me. What advantages would I gain (if any) from saving as much as I can?

Mind you, 4 years ago I was 19 years old and was just becoming acquainted with the vastly complex world of finance. I didn't even know where exactly to put my savings. CDs? GICs? RRSPs? What does it all mean?

So 3 years ago I started researching finance, in depth. I started reading online materials on stocks, bonds, GICs, money markets, and everything else. Basically, I wanted to become aware of all the options I had.

A few months passed, it was July of 2007, and I was observing the stock market. I observed one thing: stocks had been rising since 2002. So, it had been 5 years of continuous rise. If I put my money in stocks now, I reasoned, I would probably lose a whole bunch of it when the stock market crashes (at the time I figured it was a matter of months before the next crash).

So I decided to hold off on buying stocks and keep exploring. Maybe there was something I could put my money into that wasn't just a plain vanilla savings account. I turned my eyes toward inflation. At that point, my only recollection of inflation was the disastrous hyperinflation that my parents experienced in Romania during the 1990s. I remembered clearly that there was a time when every week the price of bread would double. I wondered if something like that could happen again, in North America.

After doing a bit of research on the CPI and noticing that inflation had been going on, though at a slower pace, in the western world as well, I realized there was really no difference between Canada and Romania in terms of currency. Fundamentally, the currency system was exactly the same. So, technically, even though my savings account was CDIC ensured, the purchasing power of that money was not.

I decided to look for ways of protecting against inflation. Initially, my idea was to actually start an inflation insurance firm. Yes, I was determined to sell inflation insurance!

But there already was inflation insurance - and in October, 2007, I finally found out what it was. Gold. My research quickly took me on the path of precious metals, which had been inflation-proof for thousands of years. A good enough track record, I figured.

Great, so I decided to move some of my savings into gold. Of course, I realized it must not be too much, because gold is extremely volatile. Not only that, but gold had been going up for 6 years - longer than the stock market. Surely it was due for a correction. I started small, and moved slowly, making sure that my bullion position never exceeded the "safe" limit that I had set for myself.

But how did we end up talking about gold? The topic was savings. In general. And why it's important to have savings.

Well, first I must make it clear that gold is the only true form of savings. Paper depreciates, and is vulnerable to political turmoil. Stocks are risky - companies go under all the time. Real estate also depreciates and is vulnerable to political turmoil. If you want something that can withstand many generations and has a track record of preserving value through time (which is what savings is), that something is gold, and silver. Precious metals.

Now we can talk about why savings is power. What does it mean to have savings? It means you have the power to readily take on adversity, for a prolonged period of time, in the hope of achieving a greater income. For the individual, it means you can go without a job longer, so you have the latitude to negotiate higher pay in full view of the risk of remaining unemployed, because that doesn't bother you, because you have savings. It means you can explore new business ideas and have no fear of failure, because you know you have savings.

But this applies not only to individuals. Savings is power for countries as well. You see, the country that is able to take on the greatest adversity for the longest period of time will come out on top. Wars are won by those countries that have accumulated the greatest savings. In World War II, the US had the most gold of any country in the world. The US won the war and continued to dominate the world for decades thereafter. Remember: gold is savings, and savings is gold.

Now, 4 years after I started saving, I think I can finally appreciate the power of savings. I see now that debt is servitude, and savings is power. For you see, those who are in debt are subservient to those who have the savings. This has always been the case for all of time. Which side are you on?

Predictions for 2010

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 22:02:46 GMT

My 10 predictions for 2010:

Inflation will surprise everybody. Watch prices carefully. Everything will be up 10-15% by summer. Your lunch will no longer be $7, but $10, and soon $12. Your bus ticket will no longer be $3, but $4 and soon $5. All in 2010.
Revolution will surprise the powers that be. The US is ripe for a revolution. Especially when it becomes perfectly clear that Obama has done nothing but lie, and that the propaganda machine around Obama is more powerful and more terrifying than what Bush could've ever dreamed of.
The big important theme for 2010: Cost cutting. The words "budget" and "low cost" will be what keep most businesses alive. It'll be about stretching every dollar, stretching every penny, despite the growing unacknowledged inflation.
China will be a big story in 2010, specifically recognition that China is now the world's dominant economic superpower and that US treasuries will soon be liquidated en masse. Furthermore, China will be a story because all of the inflation we'll be seeing will be originating directly from China!
Not to be outdone, mobile phones will go big in 2010 (or rather, small). There will be a surprise in the mobile market that neither Google nor Apple will appear to have prepared for - and that will come from Microsoft. Google, Apple, you have been warned! Yes, we're talking about Windows 7 phones.
Steorn, and a few others, will surprise the oil companies. Yes, free energy will arrive in 2010, if you know where to look. Steorn will be doing a demo early in the year, so it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. The human race has reason to celebrate, and reason to rise up!
Electric cars will reach power parity with gas-powered cars. Range will be hundreds of miles on a single tank. Batteries will charge in seconds! You have been warned...
Government will expand to take over every aspect of our lives. Yes, this is a sad one, but as private sector jobs disappear due to income tax bracket creep caused by inflation, government will expand to take over nearly every aspect of industry. We could see 90% of jobs becoming government-run or government-backed in some way.
Masses will be waking up, in a surprising way. TV will have a decreasing influence in everyday life, and you will become surprised to know that your next-door neighbor knows as much about the New World Order as you do, plus a lot of other things about free energy, UFOs, and other "black-listed" knowledge.
Wage inflation, yes wage inflation, will begin. Your salary will probably be up 50% by the end of the year, but inflation in everything else will have been closer to 100%.

Overall themes for 2010: surprise, reform, and revolution! Change will come, but not because of Obama.

Philosophical Bull and Gnostic Brain Flatulence

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:38:11 GMT

Is time linear?
Does every interval of time contain the same amount of information?
What does time contain anyway?

Time is a container for change. Time contains the delta between one state of the cosmos and another. Each finite interval of time contains within it the amount of change that has occurred from the beginning of that interval to the end of that interval.

In a sense, change is novelty and novelty is change. Novelty is merely a synonym for change. So when we think about novelty theory, to refer back to the work of Terence McKenna, we're really analyzing the content of time.

We know that the content of space is matter, and energy. But what is the content of time? It's a perplexing question for those who cannot see the logical conclusion that time in fact contains information. For it is information that informs change. Information is nothing other than change, and change is information. Novelty is therefore information. We're running around in circles describing the same phenomenon with different words, each word trying to out-grandiose the others.

But the fact is simple and yet stunning: Time contains information, much like how space contains matter.

Now, we know another interesting fact from basic observation of the world around us, and that is that information is cumulative. You never lose information. This has been elaborated by Terence McKenna as well. Essentially, the fabric of time itself is cumulative. At every stage in the evolution of the universe, we have gone from a state of low complexity to a state of higher complexity. We've never "devolved" into a state of lower complexity. Complexity has always increased.

Well, what is complexity? First, it helps to understand how we obtain complexity. At the start of our universe, if we accept the big bang theory, the highest level of complexity in the universe was characterized by a primordial soup of electrons and elementary particles. From that evolved the first atom, clearly a structure with an order far more advanced than what had existed prior to its emergence out of the primordial ontos.

Now, this first atom, the hydrogen atom, contained a whole lot more information than its parts, or even the sum of its parts. Because the hydrogen atom has a logical structure far more elaborate than the logical structure which represents an electron. Indeed, it is this logical structure that we must talk about when we're talking about complexity and information. The hydrogen atom is an entity which requires far more information to describe than the electron or the proton alone. So basically, the primordial soup required a very small amount of meta-data (meta-information, or logical structure) to describe, compared to what followed (i.e. the hydrogen atom). This is where we get the notion of increasing complexity. Complexity is the measure of the quantity of information required to produce the simplest possible explanation of a particular physical phenomenon.

As the universe evolved further, we got more and more complex structures. We got other atoms, molecules, organic compounds, and then biological life, and finally social life; intelligent life. Each of these complexities builds on the previous level of complexity. Molecules build on atoms. Social life (cultural or intelligent life) builds on acultural, biological life. Microbial life builds on essential organic compounds. In essence, each new level of complexity contains within it all existing levels of complexity.

Thus, complexity is conserved. We can in fact emphatically state that complexity is never destroyed. It is strictly conserved.

So what does this all imply for the nature of time? Well, time contains within it descriptions of changes within entities of varying complexity. At the beginning of the universe, each second of time contained a only a very minute description of changes, because only a minute description was needed for the level of complexity at which the universe had arrived at that time. Basically, God only needed a handful of bits of information to describe a change in the state of the universe when the universe was still in its primordial soup state.

As the universe complexified, necessarily the amount of information contained within each second of time needed to increase, in order to completely describe the more complex universe that was emerging. Basically, each level of complexity required more information about the changes within that level of complexity.

Thus, as the universe cooled and complexified, time became more and more burdened with information, so that each moment of passing time contained within it more information than the previous moment.

This process continued to this day. With every passing moment, time "expands" to contain more information than any previous moment that has ever existed. This is a profound concept to grasp, with profound consequences for our perception of time. It means that our linear time assumption, the assumption that time is isotropic and linear - that each moment is the same as every other moment, and that each interval of time is qualitatively and quantitatively the same as every other interval - is absolutely patently false and misleading.

We have to ditch the idea that time is somehow plain, linear, and uninteresting. Time is extremely interesting, and ought to be studied by science like nothing else, because we don't have a sufficiently clear understanding of the nature of time.

But the interesting implications of this "expanding time" theory are many. This theory actually validates intuitively-derived beliefs in many cultures that time is accelerating, or that time is heading towards an ultimate end. In fact, even modern science has managed to create a theory mainly involving human culture and cultural progress which indicates that there may be a point in the not too distant future where all of our knowledge, having been preserved thanks to the law of conservation of complexity, leads to a point of infinite temporal acceleration - a point of asymptotic discovery and asymptotic change, putting an end to time itself. Indeed, this very idea has been prophesied by others, including the ancient Mayans with their apocalyptic 2012 prophecy, or the Christians, or even modern-day prophets like Terence McKenna, although I'm sure he would despise being called a "prophet."

We must challenge all of our dearly-held assumptions about time or else we will not proceed to make true scientific discoveries. Today, we carry notions about time that are akin to believing that the Earth is flat or that it sits atop the backs of four turtles. For example, we believe that causal connections can only exist from the past to the future. We have established one predetermined direction for causality. Yet, we can clearly observe retrocausal effects all around us that seem to defy the laws of physics and all too often get classed as mere coincidences or worse, paranormal phenomena. In fact, such occurrences should be observed experimentally and we should try to develop a theory for explaining such retrocausal phenomena as the appearance of 9-11 as a motif in various artifacts well in advance of the actual event which occurred on 9-11-2001. Other retrocausal phenomena include such cases as the flight of animals to safety prior to a devastating tsunami or earthquake. Anything that is often classed as premonition or prophecy ought to be investigated as a potential candidate for retrocausality - events from the future having causal links to events in the past. It's crazy to think that the future could have a causal influence on the past, as it means that the past is now just as malleable or perhaps more malleable than the future!

Anyway, I hope I've been able to shed some light on the strange nature of time and why what we humans often think is obvious is really not so.

I could probably talk further here but instead I think I need to actually summarize what I described:

Time is a container for... change in information, also known as novelty. Necessarily, then, time has at least two dimensions.
Complexity is conserved. Each new level of complexity builds on lower levels. Complexity is never destroyed or reduced.
Time is non-linear and quite probably anisotropic.
Time is expanding, with each one-second interval containing more information than any previous one-second interval. This is subjectively perceived as an acceleration.
There may be an endpoint for time, consisting of an asymptotic acceleration of the rate of progress toward infinite complexity.
Causality probably works both ways, even if it seems odd to us. Retrocausality seems to explain perfectly the phenomenon of prescience in some organisms.

Bend your mind, but be careful not to break it!

A Little Seasonal Spirit

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:57:04 GMT

Spring Solstice

‘Tis the season to be jolly, as the sun begins to dawn.
Spring hath right now just begun.

The solstice ends the sun’s decline.
Soon the snow will melt, the sun will shine.

The sun will burn, high in the sky...
Just like your love did, last July.

Dan's Gold & Silver Alert

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:17:58 GMT

Dan's Gold & Silver Recommendation: Buy (with caution)

We've now corrected 10% in both gold and silver, from the top reached a few weeks ago.

I think it's time, given the speed and severity of the correction, to start buying again.

However, I do think that further downside is possible. So cautious buying is advised.

I will try to have this segment at every major turn in the market so that you can stay up to date with the latest market movements.

So stay tuned for more of "Dan's Gold & Silver Alert."

IE 9: Will it be enough to make me switch from Firefox?

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:22:47 GMT

Internet Explorer 9 will be coming out soon. It is going to have hardware-accelerated rendering of web pages. In essence, it will use the video card (instead of the CPU) to render web pages. This means much faster performance, awesome effects (even 3D), and less CPU usage.

Channel 9 has posted a demo of IE 9. The video shows some of the awesomeness of this new version of IE.

So here are some highlights of what's coming:

Web page rendering on the GPU (instead of CPU)
Better standards support
New JavaScript engine, with performance similar to Firefox

Here is a comparison of browser performance, from Ars Technica:

As you can see, IE 9 is now on par with Firefox and Chrome.

Not good news for Firefox. Or is it?

It seems the Firefox people aren't sitting idly by. They're busy implementing hardware accelerated rendering in Firefox 3.7.

So it's certainly going to be an interesting competition between IE and Firefox. It looks like the browser wars are on again.

Windows 7 Phones: Addendum

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:26:35 GMT

Not long after I posted my first topic outlining the idea of Windows 7 smart phones, I found this...

Razorfone: A Conceptual Windows 7 & WPF-powered Multi-Touch Phone Retail Experience

It looks like the idea of a Windows 7 phone is alive & well. While the "Razorfone" is a concept for retail environments (a kind of kiosk), it's nice to see others considering the idea of putting Windows 7 on phones.

One more piece of good news on the mobile phone front:

WIND Mobile Takes Off - National Post

WIND Mobile - www.windmobile.ca - has finally been given the green light in Canada. No longer will we be limited to the triopoly of Rogers/Bell/Telus. Hopefully, this means no more 3-year contracts and lower prices in general. Canada is the most backward country in the world when it comes to mobile phones, largely because of Rogers & Bell's huge political influence.

I urge all who are upset about Rogers or Bell to check out WIND Mobile and consider switching over. Actually, I urge all to check out WIND Mobile. From what I can see, their plans are quite cheap and straightforward.

64-bit Windows: The Definitive Guide

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 01:20:09 GMT

1. How much memory does 32-bit Windows support?

I'll try to explain this as simply as I possibly can...

You can have as much as 64 GB of RAM with 32-bit Windows, but there will be a hole between 3 GB and 4 GB.

64 GB? Yes. How is that possible? Well, Intel processors for a long time have had a feature called PAE (Physical Address Extension) that adds another 4 bits to the 32-bit limit of Windows, making it effectively 36 bit.

But...
A few caveats:
- If you have only 4 GB of RAM, you'll see just 3 GB because of the hole between 3 GB and 4 GB.

- If your CPU doesn't have PAE, you're stuck with 3 GB as the limit. Go to My Computer - Properties (in XP) to verify you have "Physical Address Extension" listed in your system information.

Also, processes in 32-bit Windows will see 2 GB of memory. But they won't see the same 2 GB. They'll be moved around by Windows so that all of your memory gets used (it's called multitasking!). So there is no "2 GB limit" as some might have you believe. The real limit is 3 GB, or even more if you have PAE.

2. What is different in 64-bit Windows?

The first thing that's different, you can access up to 16 EB (exabytes) of RAM! That's 8 million 2-TB hard drives!

But there are a few more things you need to be aware of:
- 64-bit Windows uses up 60% more memory and disk space than 32-bit Windows due to the doubling of pointer size
- You may have trouble finding 64-bit drivers for older hardware
- 32-bit software will still run perfectly on 64-bit Windows, thanks to WoW (Windows on Windows) emulation
- 64-bit Windows allows you to access all 4 GB of memory when you have 4 GB installed (not just 3 GB like 32-bit Windows)
- There is no memory hole in 64-bit Windows
- Each process can use more than 2 GB of memory
- Some CPU-intensive operations will complete faster if they take advantage of 64 bits (up to 5 times faster!)

Overall, if you have 4 GB of RAM or more, you should install 64-bit Windows to get rid of the memory hole. If you have 3 GB or less, you should stick with 32-bit Windows, because 64-bit Windows will eat up 60% more of your precious RAM.

My Experience - Going from 2 GB to 4 GB

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 on my machine, with 4 GB RAM. It runs much more smoothly than it did on 2 GB of RAM. I installed 64-bit Windows 7 on 2 GB of RAM. Don't do it. It caused my memory usage to go up from 50% to 80%. Now, with 4 GB, my memory usage is down to 40%.

So, if you have 3 GB or less RAM and aren't planning to upgrade it right away after installing 64-bit Windows, don't install 64-bit Windows. It will eat up too much of your RAM.

D3: Free WPF Data Visualization

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:37:26 GMT

Today I just discovered a neat little WPF graphing library called D3 (DynamicDataDisplay).

It's amazingly architected so that it's fast and extensible. Although it requires .NET 3.5, I was able to downgrade it to .NET 3.0 by using LinqBridge, a free library that emulates 99% of Linq without requiring .NET 3.5.

Actually, LinqBridge deserves a topic on its own - there is literally no reason for you to require .NET 3.5 in your apps, unless you use Linq-to-SQL. Linq-to-Objects is 99% emulated by LinqBridge.

To .NET library developers: start distributing .NET 3.0 versions of your libraries using LinqBridge, so that my Vista users don't have to download .NET 3.5. Saves me a boatload of headache as an ISV.

So, back to the main topic. If you're looking for a WPF line plot library that's free or simply want an example of how to build a WPF control library the right way, just take a look at D3.

Those are my findings for today. I guess it's been an exciting day!

Windows 7 Phones: Coming Next Year!

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:50:03 GMT

So, it seems Moore's Law is at it again. And those who are not aware of it (by now) will be left in the dust. Read this article and you'll know what I mean.

First, I must warn you that you may be offended by reading this article. If you are an ardent fan of Google or Apple and/or a hater of Microsoft, you may not like what I'm about to tell you. That's fine. Just be prepared, if you do plan to read on.

Yesterday I installed Windows 7 on a 5-year-old laptop with 512 MB RAM and only 7 GB of free disk space. It installed (surprise!) and ran flawlessly! It even ran smoother than the XP installation I had on it before. Probably because with all the service packs, XP has actually become more bloated than Windows 7.

Now, I want you to note the specs: 512 MB RAM, 7 GB of disk space. Impressive. A high-end PC from 10 years ago would've had these specs. So literally, Windows 7 supports a decade of computers!

But what's more fascinating is the mobile arena. Currently, Apple is still dominant and yet still afraid to lose its iron grip on the iPhone. On the surface, Apple appears to be very friendly to developers, but behind the scenes they are the control freaks they've always been - I'm looking at you, Steve!

Anyway, there are quite a few frustrating things about the iPhone. First, you can only sell your app through Apple's app store and it has to be approved by Apple. Second, there is no Flash on the iPhone, and no web browser other than Safari. This ought to raise eyebrows and even get Apple into legal trouble like Microsoft got into trouble with IE and Windows, for supposedly abusing their monopoly. But it seems only Microsoft is the unlucky one.

Next we have Google's Android OS, which is a commendable OS. It has everything. It is, for mobile devices, like Windows is for PCs. It is open to developers and developers can share & sell their applications without Google's approval. The only "problem" with Android is that there are too many variants of it. I wouldn't really call this a problem. It's a natural drawback of having to support a wide variety of devices. I mean, look at Windows: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and do you hear Windows developers complaining about it? No. They've adapted to it. They expect it. Only Apple fanboys complain about "too many variants" of Android because they don't understand it.

Next, we have Windows Mobile. Or do we? Windows Mobile is laughably dated and limited. Microsoft seems to have lost it completely on the mobile front. But have they? Or are we all missing something that's actually staring us in the face? Are we missing the elephant in the room?

Yes.

Let me introduce you all to the elephant in the room. It's Windows 7. Yup. And it's moving to smart phones. Remember, I installed Windows 7 on a PC with 512 MB RAM and 7 GB of disk space. Why do you think Microsoft decided to actually support old devices this time, and not raise hardware requirements like before? Why do you think Microsoft developed multi-touch capabilities in Windows 7? Is it for all those giant useless tablets out there? Is it for all the giant useless netbooks out there? No! It's for MOBILE PHONES!

Suddenly it all makes sense. But wait, I hear you say, how can Windows 7 ever fit on a phone? Simple: There are smart phones today that have 512 MB of memory. There are smart phones today that are extensible (via microSD card) to as much as 32 GB of storage. Last but not least, is Intel's Atom processor. It's an x86 processor (just like the desktop ones) with speeds of nearly 2 GHz! But the best thing about Atom is, it's extremely low-power and low-heat.

So the situation is now ripe for Windows 7 to start transitioning onto smaller and smaller mobile devices. There are MIDs / UMPCs currently available with screens of 4.8" which is about as small as a PSP. They fit in your pocket. And they run Windows 7. The leap from here to mobile phones is tiny. There is no leap. It's a baby step.

In conclusion, if you thought Microsoft lost the mobile space, you are totally mistaken, and you'll be in for a shock next year. All the Android and Apple fans out there won't know what hit them. Better get on for the ride.

As for what I'm doing to prepare, I'm back developing client-side Windows applications. I use WPF and .NET. They are extremely easy and fun to work with. Microsoft has always had the best support for developers, which is what helped them gain (and maintain) a monopoly for so long. Windows has more software than any other OS, and will continue to do so for many years thanks to Windows 7.

DoEvents really is evil!

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 01:15:46 GMT

Apparently some of my older blog articles were really quite popular, because today I stumbled upon something I wrote 5 years ago:

Application.DoEvents() - The call of the devil.
DoEvents messes up the normal flow of your application. If I recall correctly, DoEvents is asynchronous which means it terminates before the application has actually processed any outstanding events, so if you're using it in a procedure with many sequential statements, calling DoEvents causes a huge disturbance whenever it's called. Basically, if you find yourself needing to call DoEvents anywhere, think about starting another thread instead, or using asynchronous delegates.

Imagine this if you will: You have a button on your form that, when clicked, does some complex processing. During the complex processing it also intermittently calls DoEvents to keep the application's user interface "responsive" -- not the best method, I would have used async delegates, but we're talking about a mediocre programmer here. Anyhow, the user sees the application still responding and no indication that there's some processing going on. So the user clicks that button again WHILE the processing is going on! The button responds to the event and starts another processing thread but it isn't actually a thread here, I hope you get what I'm saying. So, like I said earlier, DoEvents screws up the flow of the application too easily.

I want to comment on this further, because I don't think I was really clear at the time.

DoEvents really is evil. Horribly, horribly evil.

In fact, the whole Windows Forms threading model is deficient. The fact that you can set a Label's Text property from any thread is a clear warning sign that something is wrong. This is only now becoming evident to me after having worked for a few months with WPF, which doesn't allow any such nonsense. It will throw an exception if you try to execute UI code on a non-UI thread.

DoEvents should have never been included in the .NET Framework, because it gives a programmer the illusion that you can get by without worker threads. You can't. If a programmer wants to keep the UI responsive while another task is executing, that programmer should use a background worker thread. To update the UI from that thread (to show changing progress), the programmer should call Invoke on the appropriate control and pass in a delegate that will be executed on that control's UI thread. Not only does this serve to keep things consistent, but it also reduces the chances of odd bugs related to threading (which are always difficult to troubleshoot).

So, in short, avoid DoEvents and do what good programmers do: use worker threads. WPF makes it easy (and dare I say fun?) to create & use worker threads, and it's perfectly safe. Windows Forms has a somewhat sketchy UI threading model, mainly because it still has to deal with Win32 API behind the scenes. This is also a reason why you should migrate to WPF and stop releasing production software built with Windows Forms. The sooner Windows Forms dies, the better.

Call of the Devil: System.Diagnostics.Process.Start

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:54:34 GMT

So today will be the last time I use System.Diagnostics.Process.Start without explicitly setting UseShellExecute to true.

Why?

Oh, it started out innocently enough - I was building a simple load testing tool in C# to load-test a custom ASP.NET HTTP handler I was implementing. The tool would basically run wget many times to simulate HTTP requests. Don't know why I didn't just use System.Net.WebClient (because I certainly could've), but I guess I just had wget on my mind.

Anyway, so the tool ran fine but it slowly leaked away memory and handles. Initially I thought it was my HTTP handler. So I ran it with an invalid URL, just to test if maybe the load testing tool itself had a memory leak. Sure enough, it did!

The leak seemed to be coming from my call to System.Diagnostics.Process.Start.

So I did a quick Googling and it turns out that System.Diagnostics.Process.Start causes the child process to inherit handles from the parent process. That means, whatever process you spawn (e.g. Internet Explorer), that process gets all of the handles owned by your process! So even if you free up handles in your process, if the process you spawned is still running, your handles won't really be freed because the child process is supposedly using them. A more detailed explanation can be found here.

As it turns out, the CreateProcess call in System.Diagnostics.Process.Start has a certain parameter that is hard-coded: the bInheritHandles parameter is hard-coded to true. Well, that's a shame now isn't it?

So what can we do instead?

I would prefer any solution except calling the CreateProcess API directly, since API calls are ugly. One option is to set ProcessStartInfo.UseShellExecute to true before calling Process.Start. However, you won't be able to redirect stdio. In fact, if you want to redirect stdio you either have to accept MS's buggy implementation or roll your own with pipes, API, and all that funky stuff.

One last thing...

With the Process class, be sure to explicitly Close the process object (not just Dispose) after starting the process or after you're done using it, because otherwise the process handle may leak.

Visual Studio 2010 is a .NET App

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:09:39 GMT

Not even two months after I wrote this article, where I described why desktop .NET is finally ready for take-off, the news is out that Visual Studio 2010 is a managed (.NET) application. Finally, Microsoft are setting an example.

What does this mean to you, the developer? It means that if you've been sitting on the sidelines regarding .NET and are still coding with *gasp* MFC, or Win32 API, it's finally time to move to .NET.

This also means that WPF is here to stay, unlike its predecessor - Windows Forms. Many early adopters of .NET were under the impression that Windows Forms would be supported and actively developed for many years. As it turned out, Windows Forms was a dead end.

The good news: WPF is now fully endorsed by Microsoft through Visual Studio 2010. This means WPF is finally mature enough for adoption. Plus, it's included in Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You don't even have to distribute the .NET Framework (provided you target version 3.0 and not 3.5 or 4.0). Visual Studio now makes it easy to target a specific version of the .NET Framework, unlike some of the early versions (VS 2003/2005).

Personally, I think we're going to start seeing an explosion of new WPF apps in the coming months. It could be like the explosion that happened with the iPhone (and I'm not talking about the screen).

These are the most exciting times for Windows developers since Windows 95.

Where's Bob Prechter Now?

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:41:47 GMT

So gold just shot up above $1090 today - a new all-time high, oil is up above $80 a barrel again, and I'm getting emails in my inbox about contract opportunities with rates of $60+ an hour. So what does all of this have to do with Bob Prechter?

Who is Bob Prechter anyway? For those who don't know, Robert Prechter is a semi-popular financial analyst who occasionally pops out of his wooden shed to warn us all about the impending danger of deflation. Much like Mike "Mish" Shedlock of globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com, he was right in the fall of 2008, when the price of everything collapsed spectacularly. However, most prices have pretty much recovered since then and some (like gold) are actually making new highs!

Robert Prechter has an interesting theory, however: that short-term market movements are entirely random - influenced by a recurring cycle known as the "Elliott Wave," which is based on the Fibonacci ratio of 1.618. In short, markets are irrational, but predictably so - they can be predicted by applying this Elliott Wave theory.

I agree with Robert Prechter on the "markets are irrational" bit. I even think he might be on to something with the Elliott Wave theory. But as far as deflation goes, I am strongly against it. I do not believe deflation can happen in a system of fiat currency (where money is created out of thin air).

One example that deflationistas often like to bring up is the case of Japan in the 1990s, and how allegedly Japan experienced deflation from 1990 to now. That is just totally wrong. Japan experienced roughly -0.5% inflation for 3 years. That's it. That's all the "deflation" it ever experienced. Japan is not a valid example of deflation.

One other example some deflationistas hearken back to as a last resort is the Great Depression. However, during the Great Depression the US was still on a gold standard, so that example is totally invalid in today's fiat world.

So given the track record of these "deflation" predictions, why does Robert Prechter think that "this time is different"? And where is he now, when his predictions appear to be falling apart by the day?

Making Bad Ass-umptions

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:33:58 GMT

Let's talk a bit about assumptions and what can happen if you make wrong ones and never bother to correct them. The example in this article will, fittingly enough, be Microsoft - and specifically .NET.

.NET is supposed to be an OS-independent API. It was designed to hide most of the OS behind a convenient, consistent API that does not expose any underlying OS details. That's what I mean by "OS-independent API." But it turns out, Microsoft is still a little confused about what "OS-independent API" really means.

Starting with .NET 1.0, Microsoft has continually made the assumption that the less unmanaged code they had in their implementation of .NET, the better. This is best evidenced on this web page - called "Is .NET a Win32 Wrapper?"

In reality, an OS-independent API does not have to be entirely OS-independent. Only the API - the part that the programmer sees - is OS-independent, hence "OS-independent API". The implementation need not be OS-independent, and should not be.

The developer does not care how many unmanaged calls are happening behind the scenes. The only thing the developer cares about is the API, because the only thing the developer sees is the API. As long as the API is OS-independent, the implementation of the API does not matter.

So why is Microsoft reinventing the wheel by reimplementing basic controls like buttons in Windows Forms, and then again in WPF? Why not just create a thin wrapper around Windows API, like SWT? (SWT, by the way, is a thin Java wrapper around standard OS controls like Button, TextBox, etc.)

Right now, .NET is completely lacking a thin wrapper for Win32 API. WinForms and WPF are both thick wrappers. They only call the Windows API for extremely low-level tasks like GDI. They are more like Java Swing than SWT. The trouble is, when you build a thick wrapper, you inevitably run into performance issues and UI inconsistencies. You're also reinventing the wheel, often unnecessarily.

Another issue you run into when building a thick wrapper is size. SWT is 2 MB (small enough to fit into the L2 cache of a Core 2 processor!) because it's a thin wrapper. You also have the issue of maintainability: a thick wrapper is more complex and therefore harder to maintain than a thin wrapper.

Sure, there are advantages to thick wrappers. I'm not sure exactly what they are, but there probably are some. However, developers often prefer simple, clean, and small applications. And so do users. So, Microsoft, where is the SWT for .NET?

Desktop .NET Finally Ready for Take-Off

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:46:10 GMT

It was 2002. I had just finished developing Dacris Benchmarks 4.9 using pure Win32 API. I was proud of myself. It was the first 100% Windows API application I had developed. No more Borland OWL crutches. It was a clean start. The application went on to become a phenomenal success. But something was not quite right in the land of Windows development. A major new player was just entering the arena. Its name was ".NET", previously known as NGWS, and it promised to change everything.

From the beginning it was clear that this .NET thing was not going to be popular right away. It was a gigantic change at a time when the world was still trying to recover from the collapse of the dot-com bubble. It was, furthermore, a behemoth in the days when broadband Internet was still a rare commodity. Weighing in at a hefty 23 MB, the .NET redistributable was just too much of a penalty to pay for the convenience of developing "managed" applications with a truly object-oriented language.

From the developer's perspective, .NET was amazing from day one. Sure it still had some kinks which ultimately led me to develop NetXP, but as a development paradigm it completely overshadowed the archaic Windows API. It was a dream come true - garbage collection, Windows Forms, remoting, and a whole bunch of other goodies.

.NET immediately took off on the web. Within one year, nearly every major company was developing ASP.NET web apps with .NET 1.1. The release of Windows Server 2003 only served to accelerate that trend even further. .NET web development soon reached a frenzy as the advantages of ASP.NET over other technologies (PHP, JSP) became evident.

However, something was wrong on the desktop. Three years after .NET came out, virtually no .NET desktop applications were being developed. The reason? Most ISVs, especially the small ones, saw the gigantic size of the .NET framework and the support headache associated with its deployment as a major roadblock to adoption. Even though .NET was great for developers, it was not so great for end users.

The fact that Windows XP SP2 and SP3 did not include the .NET Framework only made the situation worse. For most ISVs, it was clear that if they wanted to develop Windows apps, they would have to continue using Windows API, until something better came along.

Well, something better finally did come along in 2007. It was called .NET 3.0 (or WinFX), and it was embedded in Windows Vista. Suddenly, the deployment obstacle to .NET adoption was removed. Now, there was really no reason for ISVs not to adopt .NET. Or was there?

The reason was one word: "Vista." This word soon came to be reviled among the Windows community. Nobody wanted to touch Vista with a ten-foot pole. The truth is, Vista was plagued with problems for at least a year after its RTM. Finally, in 2008, the initial Vista problems started getting resolved and users started adopting Vista at a more rapid pace.

Today, there is a two-word reason why .NET adoption on the desktop finally makes sense: "Windows 7." Windows 7, which includes .NET 3.5 by default, is leaner and meaner than its predecessor. Every PC that can run Vista can run Windows 7 and do so with better performance. In a few months, the combined market share of Windows 7 and Windows Vista will exceed 35%. It's practically there right now.

From an ISV's perspective, however, it is not only market share that counts. It is also the value per customer within that segment of the market. For example, a Mac user typically has 4 times more value than a Windows user because Mac users tend to buy applications more readily than Windows users. Now when it comes to Windows XP versus Windows Vista/7, the Windows XP user at this point is basically stuck in the stone age. The odds of a Windows XP user purchasing a new application are much lower than the odds of a Windows Vista/7 user purchasing a new application. The Windows XP user generally runs old applications on old hardware, and is very conservative when it comes to making new purchases. The result is that the value of a Windows XP user is (sorry XP users) generally lower than the value of a Windows Vista/7 user from the point of view of an ISV.

Anyway, to make a long story short, despite a market share of "only" 35%, Windows Vista/7 users are now actually a more important market for ISVs than Windows XP users. This is only now starting to happen, after about 8 years of XP dominance.

What does this mean for ISVs and the software industry as a whole? It means that .NET will finally be adopted on the desktop. .NET makes development much easier, there is no question about that. However, for a long time there was a question about whether Microsoft would embrace or at least continue to support .NET. That question has finally been answered. .NET is here to stay and the future for Windows applications is .NET. Windows API has finally come to the end of its life. It's an exciting time to be a Windows developer.

I was wrong

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 03:00:14 GMT

OK, remember this article?
"Imminent Stock Market Crash"

On August 24, I warned that a stock market crash is "imminent" and that the "coming weeks" would be "turbulent to say the least."

Well, I was wrong.

The market did dip on August 28 and fell a few hundred points but has since rallied to a new 2009 high.

Where did I go wrong?

I got the timing wrong. That's all. The crash is still coming. The Dow is still going to 2000.

At this point, I think the Dow will probably reach 11,000 before the crash begins. The peak will come in October.

Only suckers are buying now.

That's all I'm going to say.

Inflation? Deflation? It don't matter.

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:15:45 GMT

I want to draw your attention away from the talking heads on CNN/FOX/CNBC (who are all shouting "recovery") and toward a recent video by TheModernMystic:

Apparently, M3 - a measure of US money supply - has been declining now for over a year.
Credit as well as money has been declining at an annual rate of at least 5%!
In other words, we are in deflation (in the US) since March of 2008.

Banks are being paid to hold money in reserve and NOT lend. Why is the Fed doing this?
Could it be that China now has enough power over US monetary policy to prevent inflation (and thus devaluation of their dollar assets)?

Additionally, consumer attitudes toward credit & spending have changed dramatically. This has been pointed out by Mish on his blog many times.
High & rising unemployment has forced people to save (US savings rate now 7%) and has driven salaries lower (people taking 30%-50% pay cuts).

The big question is whether deflation can/will continue.
I believe that it can, and it will. It all has to do with what is in the interest of those who control the money supply.

Let's look at it this way. If you're a bank, and you've given out $5 billion in loans,
you would ideally want to be paid back in full (with interest) on those loans. What happens if there is a sudden 50% inflation?
You get 50% less than what you gave out in loans. That is, you are not paid in full, because the dollar has lost 50% of its value.
So, given this reality, you would ideally want the dollar to maintain its purchasing power or even gain in purchasing power.
In other words, the ideal condition for banks (and other lenders) is deflation!

Now, let's look at China. China has at least $1 trillion in US bonds. They've lent out $1 trillion to the US. They would ideally
want to be paid back in strong dollars so that they can purchase US assets on the cheap. They want to maximize the bang for their buck!
China wants deflation. How much control does China have over US monetary policy? I would argue that, since they are the biggest exporter to the US
and the biggest supplier of cheap labour to US companies, they have at least a tangible influence over what Ben Bernanke decides to do at the Fed.

Clearly, US banks and China want deflation. The US government, however, wants inflation because they have no way of paying their gigantic debt burden.
How much say does the US government have in monetary policy? None. That is just a fact. The Federal Reserve is a private institution, independent of the
US government. The US government has no control over monetary policy. No matter how much inflation they want, they aren't in charge of the printing press.

Now a clearer picture starts to emerge. The picture is a little shocking for those who have been led to believe that the US dollar is headed for hyperinflation.
The picture shows what is likely to happen for the next 5-10 years, and it ain't pretty. The US dollar is likely to maintain its purchasing power or even gain
purchasing power. What is likely to unfold is another depression, similar in magnitude and character to the Great Depression. Prices of all non-essential items
will fall or remain stagnant. Wages will fall or remain stagnant. The stock market & real estate market will collapse.

So what can you do to come out ahead? First, if you have a job and can save some money, save it in gold. Have enough dollars to get by on for a few weeks but
beyond that all savings should be in gold. Why gold? Gold maintains its purchasing power. The likelihood that the dollar will gain significantly in purchasing
power is very low, simply because it's a fiat currency - its supply can be increased arbitrarily. Even if the dollar does not inflate over the coming years, you
will not have lost anything by owning gold, because gold never loses its value. Additionally, gold has no counterparty risk. It's not a loan or a promise to pay.

Secondly, get out of stocks and real estate. Real estate prices are going to continue to collapse. The Dow will go to 2000. Real estate will probably go back to
1980s price levels - $100,000 for a house. The time to buy these assets for the long haul will be in 3-5 years when the lows have been hit. However, these assets
will not perform well for the next 10+ years, so you have plenty of time to wait before getting back into "the market."

Third, bonds are going to be problematic. In a deflationary depression, first comes the stock collapse, then the bond collapse. The bond market collapse will be
far more painful than the stock market collapse. US treasury bonds are in a bubble. Bonds are the last thing to peak after a speculative mania. 0% yields are not
sustainable for more than 2 or 3 years. I've said it before and I'll say it again: owning US treasuries now is like owning dot-com stocks in 1999.

Finally, consider owning some silver. It's more risky than gold but has the potential for higher returns over the long term. Silver outperformed gold from 1932
to 1979 by a significant margin. If gold is your rainy-day fund, silver is your 401k. Regardless of whether there is inflation or not, silver will gain in value
relative to every other asset. That's what's important.

Again, let me emphasize that the inflation/deflation debate has no bearing on whether precious metals will continue to gain in value over the coming decades.
That question is answered by looking at supply & demand over the long term. The same goes for stocks, bonds, and real estate. What matters is the relative
performance of one asset compared to another.

The future of the dollar only concerns those who hold dollars and those who owe dollars. It concerns China and US banks. They wish for deflation.
The Federal Reserve, being in bed with US banks like Goldman Sachs, will probably grant them that wish. The US government will probably continue to borrow and hope for inflation. They will probably just default, like Russia in 1997.

A One-Pic Summary of the Health Care Debate

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:28:58 GMT

Weekend Summary - IRS Panic; Washington March; Gold

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:30:48 GMT

Here are some stories I found very interesting:

Rich people panic over new IRS rules
"2 million" march in Washington, DC
Barrick Gold will cut its short position in gold

My comments:

The first story explains the rise in the gold price. If companies can't keep dollar-denominated assets in foreign offshore bank accounts, they will just move those assets into gold in undisclosed locations. If it can't be audited, it can't be taxed. Problem solved.

Barrick Gold is reducing its short position in gold, which it has been keeping for at least the past 5 years. This is short-term very bullish for gold. In addition to this, many central banks have stopped selling gold and China wants to get out of the dollar.

If you are a gold investor, I think it's time to seriously consider "selling the news" after buying the rumour for the past 10 years. This gold bull market is about to come to an end, or at least cool off for the next 3 years. Take advantage of the big gold rally coming this fall to liquidate some longs.

Update:

I have to comment on the Washington march story, because apparently there were nowhere near 2 million people at the march. Regardless of how many people there were, the fact that many signs praised FOX News is a giveaway that this rally was staged by FOX News and its minions. Edit: BBC confirms "tens of thousands" attended the protest, not millions.

Sadly, a legitimate point of view about the importance of the US constitution has been hijacked and turned into a freak show of uninformed "morans" who can't even put together a coherent thought. It's a fake revolution. All efforts toward an intelligent debate about the role of the US constitution have been stifled by the controlled corporate media.

I'm still waiting for the REAL revolution.

Charlie Sheen Seeks 9/11 Truth

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:02:59 GMT

Article:
Infowars.com - Twenty Minutes with the President

Some 9/11 smoking guns:

NORAD standing down
Operation Northwoods
Memo on "Bin Laden determined to attack inside US"
Saudis flown out while nobody else could fly
PNAC
Blacking out of "Saudi Arabia" in 9/11 [C]omission Report
Omission of Building 7 in 9/11 [C]omission Report
WTC buildings falling down at free-fall speed
Larry Silverstein insurance policy & "pull it" comment
Record level of put options on airlines prior to 9/11
Giuliani knowing WTC was going to collapse
BBC knowing that Building 7 was going to collapse before it actually did
Bin Laden was a CIA asset, known as Tim Osman

Time to wake up!

> > >

Some Recommended Reading

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:12:23 GMT

The following articles discuss (in different ways) the demise of the dollar:

1. TIME - America and Its Deficits

2. Bloomberg - UN Says New Currency Is Needed

3. iStockAnalyst - China Now Net Seller of US Treasuries

Still bullish on the dollar?

Americans Getting Fooled...Again

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:39:23 GMT

Article: Up to $3,800 fine for failure to get health insurance

"WASHINGTON (AP) - A top senator is calling for fines of up to $3,800 on families who fail to get medical insurance after a health care overhaul goes into effect."
...
"The plan from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would make health insurance mandatory, just like auto coverage."

I'm not going to comment too much other than to say that this just another example of fascism in the US. Public-private partnerships. Government subsidizing private industry. And guess who gets stuck with the bill? The dumbed-down American people, that's who.

The American people lost their country in 1913, when the government took over the financial industry via the Federal Reserve and declared a monopoly on money creation. The US at that point became a fascist state. Ever since 1913, America has been nothing but a banana republic, ruled by brute force rather than law.

I will leave you with this alleged quote from Woodrow Wilson:

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 06:05:05 GMT

I'm going to get a little more personal in this post and tell you all about my latest insights into life. Seems like while everyone is starting school again, I'm here looking for work trying to forge a new path into an uncertain (and increasingly bleak) future.

I graduated from Waterloo Software Engineering in June with no job, and no idea what to do with my life. That much hasn't changed -- yet. But what has changed is my level of knowledge of the so-called "real world."

A major economic depression started in 2008, along with a gigantic paradigm shift in people's attitudes towards spending. Regardless of why or how that shift happened, it's now certain that it happened and it won't be reversed. It's here to stay. How did this affect me personally? Well, the place I was working at before I graduated basically went into a hiring freeze in November, 2008 and so I lost the full-time job I may have been offered otherwise. I ended up graduating without a job.

Following an enlightening trip to Romania, where I witnessed some rather spectacular things which I might describe in more detail in a future post, I came back with a somewhat revised outlook on life. Specifically, I realized that in order to make it in the "real world" I had to be far more easy-going and roll with the punches as it were.

I'm gaining even more insights every day. It's as if years of uncertainty are finally meshing into a coherent mass of wisdom. It's hard to describe, but it's as if the hormonal fog through which I was trying to navigate during my teenage years is finally lifting. So I will now share with you some of the pearls of wisdom that have formed inside my brain recently.

1. Reality is Negotiable
There's a lot more flexibility in everything than you might at first believe there is. An example of this is with respect to lifestyle. It's amazing to me how people in Romania can live on as little as 500 euros per month and afford all the modern aspects of American life, including cell phones, cars, travel, and of course lots of alcohol & partying. There's flexibility wherever you choose to look for it. Never be afraid to negotiate. You have nothing to lose.

2. Eliminate Expectations
When I started university in 2004, I had some pretty lofty ideals of what my life would be like after graduation. I envisioned a steady income of $60,000 or more per year, I saw myself driving a European car, living in a stylish condo downtown, and being able to travel to interesting places. Of course, I still have those visions. I still want that lifestyle, but I've come to terms with the fact that I probably won't have it for many more years to come, if ever. The party is over. What I've found is that if life does not match your expectations, you'll be unhappy. Happiness is often found when you eliminate expectations as they relate to status, wealth, and other materialistic desires. The frugal lifestyle doesn't have to be a depressing lifestyle. It's just different. It's still life.

3. Take Advantage of Black Swans
Building on wisdom from the "Black Swan," there can be both positive black swans and negative black swans. Try to minimize your exposure to negative black swans but maximize your exposure to positive black swans. They say that luck favors the well-prepared. Take risks whenever you have little to lose and much to gain. Go all-in on a good hand, to use a poker analogy. It's extremely important, and I can't stress this enough. It is extremely important to recognize the situations where you have nothing to lose and something to gain. A lot of businesses fail because they focus too much time on reducing minute losses instead of actively looking for large gains.

4. Disarm Weaknesses
The most uncomfortable (i.e. scary) things are the things from which you'll learn the most. As a well-known philosopher once said, "do something that scares you everyday." Recognize what scares you the most, and approach it, confront it, and disarm it. Not only that, but why not go on and master it? Why let fears be your master, when you can master your fears? Talk about the things you'd rather not talk about. The only way to grow is by recognizing your insecurities and disarming them. By "disarming," I mean dealing with them in any way you feel is most efficient. Don't try to become a master in something you have no interest in. But just recognize what it is that makes you uncomfortable and find a way to disarm it. If you're afraid of dogs, recognize that fact (stop denying it), and disarm it by exposing yourself to that which you fear.

5. Stop Seeking External Validation
The world is a brutal place. Nobody is going to appreciate you, hold your hand, or treat you in a special way just because you think you're special. A lot of people have incredibly fragile egos which are based purely around what other people think of them. Some will go as far as to create false impressions, manage their public appearance, and hide any weaknesses that they might have. This is suicide. If you do this, you might as well kill yourself because the same objective is achieved - your personal life, your life as an individual, ends at that point. Recognize situations where you are seeking validation and disarm those situations. Your self-esteem should not be dependent on what others think of you. Try to humiliate yourself at least once a day.

6. Loss of Control is an Illusion
Control freaks will often run into situations in which they feel that they have no control, and typically they will feel very uncomfortable -- even terrified. The loss of control may feel complete, but it's not. Typically, in an unfamiliar situation you feel the most sense of "loss of control." Again, you have more control than you think. So just chill. If you think more deeply you'll realize just how much control you actually have.

7. Always Test Assumptions
I have to give credit to the author of "The 4-Hour Workweek" for this golden piece of advice. Left-brained people always love to read books and follow prescriptions (instructions) for everything. I hate this approach, because I have to know WHY a certain step has to be taken, and what the alternatives are. I guess that's why I'm an engineer. But really, following assumptions (blindly) is akin to following a religion. Also, just because an assumption is socially prevalent doesn't mean it's right. It's often easy to overlook this reality and say that, well, the masses are always right. The masses are seldom right. And even if they were, what does it matter to you? You should be looking at assumptions as if they were hypotheses, and try to test them by experimentation.

8. Only You Can Establish Boundaries
People seldom establish their own boundaries. Sad but true. There are many boundary-pushers out there. These are the bullies of middle school, the bosses that belittle their employees, the abusive girlfriends or boyfriends, the students who tease the inexperienced supply teacher, the children who bankrupt their parents. If you do not assert your boundaries, people will assume that there are no boundaries there. I've had experience with this all my life and I always hate it when my personal boundaries are violated, and I make it clear that it's not cool. You have to be willing to say "no," in a reasonable way and be prepared to make enemies. That's life.

9. Ignore the Inconsequential
There's far too much information (and entertainment) in the world today. A lot of it is totally inconsequential relative to your own life. A lot of it is a complete waste of time. You can spend a lot of time worrying about minutiae. I've been there. I know what it's like. A lot of people with OCD probably know what I'm talking about. Spending countless hours doing something totally meaningless because you don't want to get started on that massive Anthropology assignment. You just sit there surfing the net aimlessly. You don't even go out, you don't do anything productive. Procrastinators actually have a form of OCD. Worrying about a major undertaking is pretty normal, but just don't let it consume too much of your time.

Why 9 points? I like 9. It's a very complete number. It's the highest single-digit number. How many 9s are there from 1 to 100? Google it, I won't give you the answer. I won't hold your hand. Nobody will. It's time to grow up and do things on your own. Just like you have in the past.

The next 10 years of my life will certainly be more fun than the last 10 years of my life. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to this lost decade for good. It's time to embrace the real world, free of school, free of the left-brain prison where you must accept assumptions and regurgitate them on command. It's time to enter an enlightened state of mind.

Another Shocking Chart

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Malcolm Gladwell: Genius Takes 10,000 Hours!

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 06:20:15 GMT

Fascinating video:

Cut my pay... all the way to slavery!

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:53:44 GMT

"Cut My Pay" Nonsense

Inquiring minds may want to read the following article:
Cut my pay... please! - CNN Money

Apparently workers in the US are taking 30-50% cuts in salary in order to get jobs. This is grim, folks. Really grim.

"Rebecca Eason, who used to make a comfortable $33,000-a-year living in Tennessee."

Hmm... $33,000 was a comfortable living? I wonder how that's possible. If you just take rent, add food and electricity, and sprinkle a dash of transportation costs on top of all that, you can easily get up to $1800 a month in living expenses! Now suppose you want your "comfortable" lifestyle to include some savings for retirement ($400 a month), plus a few nights out ($100 a month), a small vacation ($300 a month) and a very limited clothing budget ($200 a month) and you get to $2800 a month necessary for a comfortable lifestyle. $33,600 in annual cost. Assuming a very modest tax rate of 15%, you would need almost $40,000 for a comfortable lifestyle.

But now Rebecca isn't even making $33,000. Apparently she's making $18,000/yr in a temporary position! You can't even survive on that kind of salary. Or if you do, it's in a very compromised lifestyle. The economic situation in the US must be extremely dire for people to resort to such madness!

Downsizing of the American Lifestyle

It's now become quite clear that the American dream is finished. The US is rapidly devolving into a third-world country. That has been the plan all along, at least since the 1970s when manufacturing jobs started moving to China. Slowly, the US became a hollowed out consumer-driven "service" economy (in reality, the vast majority of wealth was concentrated in the financial sector, which was just a money-laundering front for the arms & drug trade).

But no matter how it happened, it's clear that the American lifestyle has been downsized. In the 1960s, the average salary for 2 years was enough to afford a house. Now, it takes at least 6 years worth of the average salary to buy a house. The real wage has declined to a third of what it was in the 1960s! No wonder it takes 3 salaries nowadays to support a household!

The average CEO makes up to 500 times what the average worker makes. The difference was 10 times smaller in 1980! Times have changed. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have gotten poorer.

Power Corrupts: US as the Lone Superpower

The only reason why US society was so equitable, just, and civilized 30+ years ago, post World War II, was because of the cold war. The cold war was the main reason why the US maintained such an elevated standard of living for its citizens. Social decline could not happen in the US, as it would immediately show the "weakness" of the capitalist system and, as a result, give credence to the socialist system. As long as these two rival systems fought for supremacy, the US had to maintain an image of prosperity and fairness.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 for economic reasons, and since then the US has been the lone superpower in the world. As the old saying goes, power corrupts. No longer charged with maintaining an image of prosperity, the US gradually declined into a society of poverty and inequality, which is the typical outcome of a capitalist system. Capital concentrates increasingly into the hands of the few, the well-connected, the corrupt few who have absolutely no morals and total self-interest. Power begets power. Money begets more money. Influence begets more influence.

To give credence to this theory all you have to do is look at the evidence: the decline in US standard of living from 1969 (the peak of US-Soviet rivalry as exemplified by the moon landing) to today. Nothing could be clearer than the steady downward trend in real wages and upward trend in income inequality that started in the 1970s.

The Future: Economic Crisis, Followed by Revolution

The US will follow the path of the Soviet Union in its final decline from its throne of global superpower. The first signs are already occurring. The economic crisis that the US is now seeing is far different from previous recessions. There is a deep, fundamental problem with the US economy that was caused by 30 years of easy credit, corruption, and out-of-control unproductive spending.

This economic crisis will only deepen, and it will deepen as a result of present policies being put in place to "stimulate" the economy. The current policies only serve to increase government spending, expand military operations, and continue the unsustainable American empire. The collapse of Empire America is what is necessary for the US to begin recovery.

There will come a point when Americans will become so sick of the injustice which is currently occurring that they will rise up in a new American revolution. This time, it will be a revolt against every single unconstitutional policy that has served to destroy the foundation upon which America was built. America was once a land of opportunity, and there was great prosperity because the government adhered to the US constitution and was not in bed with giant multinational corporations or hostile faraway nations.

Silver: The Opportunity of a Century

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:42:21 GMT

A Look Back

Go back to 1932 and imagine that you saved a year's salary ($600) worth of silver, a total of 2400 oz. Now suppose you did not touch your stash of 2400 oz until 1979, when you decided to sell it all for $30 an ounce. How much money would you have earned?

Answer: $72,000

You could have bought a decent house with that money in 1979. $72,000 was 9 yearly salaries in 1979. Good investment, I'd say.

Now suppose you did the same thing, but with gold. So, you would've bought $600 worth of gold in 1932 (29 oz) and then sold it in 1979 for $800 an ounce. How much would you have pocketed?

Answer: $23,200

OK. Still a decent investment. I mean, that was 3 average salaries back then, but certainly not as good as silver.

Now imagine you did the same thing, but with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which you would've bought at the rock-bottom price of $40 a share. That's 15 shares. How much would you have gotten for your investment in 1979?

Answer: $13,500

That's still a bit above the average salary. Certainly not as stellar as gold or silver though. And you had to get the market timing exactly right to snap up 15 shares at precisely the all-time low in 1932.

My point should be evident by now. Over a period of 47 years (almost an entire adult life) in the last century, starting in 1932, the best-performing asset class as an investment was silver. The worst-performing was the Dow!

A Multi-Decade Trend is Ending

The last 29 years have been exceptionally good for stock market investors, and exceptionally awful for precious metals investors. This trend will change, just as it has in the past.

Already, the metals have been outperforming the Dow for the past 8 years. However, they are still very cheap by historical standards. Silver is just $0.28 in 1930s dollars, which is close to the actual low of $0.25/oz in 1932.

Even after going up 3-fold in the last 7 years, silver is still undervalued!

The Future Looks Bright for Silver

In 1979, silver hit a high of $50/oz which it has yet to surpass. That high, adjusted for inflation, is $153. However, if I use M3 money supply growth and adjust it for net silver supply growth, I get about $250. Considering that I see gold hitting $5000 and the gold:silver ratio has been as low as 12:1 in the recent past, I don't see why silver can't even go above $400 when the real speculative mania sets in.

Assuming the odds of hitting $8 are about the same as the odds of hitting $500, the midpoint falls around $60/oz. That means, to properly balance out the downside risk & upside potential, the price of silver should be $60/oz right now. That's over 4 times higher than today's actual price.

Warren Buffett, eat your heart out! Silver will likely have incredible returns for the next 40+ years, just as it did from 1932 to 1979. Forget about buying gold. Why not get the best returns? Why not buy silver?

Bank of Canada is Understating Inflation

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:37:25 GMT

I decided to use the Bank of Canada's Inflation Calculator to see what some prices from 1968 would amount to in today's dollars. I got the 1968 prices from http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1968.html

The average house in 1968 cost about $15,000. I challenge you to find me a house today (that isn't a dump) that sells for $91,000 (the price given by the Inflation Calculator).
The price of oil in 1968 was about $5 a barrel. Is oil anywhere near $30 today?
Gasoline was 35 cents a gallon (10 cents a litre). Is gas 60 cents a litre today?
A brand-new GM car was $2800 in 1968. Show me ONE new GM vehicle I can purchase for under $17,000 today and I'll buy it.

The CPI is understating inflation (since 1968) by anywhere from 50% to 200%. The CPI should be at least 200, not 114.7.

The consistent understatement of the CPI is causing major problems for savers, retirees, and tax payers. It is essential that this problem be rectified or else the Canadian standard of living will continue to decline.

Bank of Canada, if you keep adjusting the CPI downward (for whatever reason), there will come a time when the CPI will be so out of touch with reality that people will revolt and the corruption that has been going on will become evident for all to see. So I would say it is in your own interest (for the purpose of maintaining credibility) to provide a CPI that is as accurate as possible.

Or maybe I'm just mad that I'm only getting 1.2% interest on my savings account, while the Core CPI as reported by Bank of Canada itself is 1.8%!

Kiyosaki: Prepare for the Worst

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:17:10 GMT

Article:
Preparing for the Worst - Robert Kiyosaki

"
The stock market has been going up since March 9, 2009. Talk of "green shoots" fill the air. Yet, in spite of the more positive news, I continue to recommend that people prepare for the worst.
"

He then goes on to outline several reasons why the talk of green shoots is all baloney:

1. Market manipulation, with which I agree 100%. The correlations between the Dow, TSX, and other unrelated indices are just freaky. The mysterious uptick every Friday afternoon just before the close. The signs are there that there's something fishy going on.

2. The Fed caused the problems we are seeing now. I couldn't agree more. The policy of interest rate manipulation by an independent central bank interferes with the free market. This causes all sorts of bubbles and mal-investments leading to a fundamentally weak economy.

3. Demographics. Boomers are retiring, and in the process are becoming more frugal. This is a trend that will continue through the 2010s.

4. Social Security & Medicare are unsustainable and will slowly drive the US into bigger & bigger deficits.

"
Demographics show that we are entering a battle between young and old. I call it the "Age War." The young want to hang onto their money to grow their families, businesses, and wealth. The old want the tax and investment dollars of the young to sustain their old age.

This war is not coming...it is upon us now. This is one of many reasons why I remain cautious and say, "The worst is yet to come."
"

This is all the more reason to get out of the stock market now, while it's still high.

Imminent Stock Market Crash

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:03:49 GMT

This is an alert that a stock market crash is imminent in the TSX, Dow, and other global stock markets.

Get out now before it's too late! Safety can be found in gold, silver, and bonds.

It is imperative that you take cover now. The coming weeks will be turbulent to say the least. The crash will start Wednesday or Thursday of this week.

Get out of long positions. REPEAT: Get out of long positions! I don't care if you're invested for the long term.

The Dow is going to 2300. It will be a stomach-churning ride if you have any money in the stock market.

Forget all the rosy nonsensical predictions made by Bernanke & gang. The US is in a depression. 34 million are on food stamps. Dow 9500 just doesn't reflect that reality.

The FDIC went bankrupt on August 14, 2009!

You have been warned.

A Shocking Chart

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:18:13 GMT

Source: chartoftheday.com

Meanwhile Bernanke is talking about recovery. The same man who never saw this recession coming. Why hasn't he been fired yet?

Abolish the Fed.

The End of Dow Jones?

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:58:30 GMT

Story:
Dow Jones Mulling Sale of its Indexing Business - FOX Business

Did I not say a few months ago that there won't be anymore Dow Jones?

And I quote...

"There will be no Dow Jones anymore. This will be such a spectacular and catastrophic collapse that it will be talked about for GENERATIONS. It will be written about in the HISTORY BOOKS."

- March 9, 2009

Mark my words, there will be no Dow Jones just like there will be no dollar 10 years from now (probably sooner).

Nothing is forever.

It's Happening

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:32:31 GMT

China reduces holdings of US debt - BBC
"
China reduced its holdings of US government debt by the largest margin in nearly nine years in June, according to data from the US Treasury.

China holds more US government debt than any other country and cut its holdings of US securities by more that 3% in June, said the BBC's Chris Hogg.

"China has said it would like to establish an alternative to the US dollar as the world's favoured currency for foreign exchange reserves," said our correspondent.
"

Stiglitz sees risk to dollar - Bloomberg
"
The dollar’s role as a good store of value is “questionable” and the currency has a high degree of risk, said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

“There is a need for a global reserve system,” Stiglitz, a Columbia University economics professor, said at a conference in Bangkok today. Support from countries like China should ensure orderly discussions on a new reserve system, he added.
"

And lastly, a sign of the times... Man Charged For Stealing Railroad Tracks!

So much for green shoots.

Buffett Warns of Dollar Collapse

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:43:17 GMT

Original Article:
The Greenback Effect - NY Times

"
An increase in federal debt can be financed in three ways: borrowing from foreigners, borrowing from our own citizens or, through a roundabout process, printing money. Let’s look at the prospects for each individually — and in combination.

The current account deficit — dollars that we force-feed to the rest of the world and that must then be invested — will be $400 billion or so this year. Assume, in a relatively benign scenario, that all of this is directed by the recipients — China leads the list — to purchases of United States debt. Never mind that this all-Treasuries allocation is no sure thing: some countries may decide that purchasing American stocks, real estate or entire companies makes more sense than soaking up dollar-denominated bonds. Rumblings to that effect have recently increased.

Then take the second element of the scenario — borrowing from our own citizens. Assume that Americans save $500 billion, far above what they’ve saved recently but perhaps consistent with the changing national mood. Finally, assume that these citizens opt to put all their savings into United States Treasuries (partly through intermediaries like banks).

Even with these heroic assumptions, the Treasury will be obliged to find another $900 billion to finance the remainder of the $1.8 trillion of debt it is issuing. Washington’s printing presses will need to work overtime.
"

My Comments:

To say that Warren Buffett's assumptions regarding demand for US treasury notes are optimistic is a MAJOR understatement. You'd have to live in fantasy land to imagine $900 billion in demand for US treasury bonds!

China doesn't want anymore US paper. And it's perfectly understandable. US bonds are currently a non-performing asset, just like US real estate and US stocks. In fact, the whole US stinks. It reeks of poverty and despair. The US lacks prospects for future economic growth. The US consumer, 70% of US GDP, is maxed out and won't be back for at least 20 years. Where am I going with all this? I don't see a single dollar worth of demand for US bonds coming from China.

What about US citizens? They should have some demand for US bonds. How much is a bond yielding these days anyway? 2%? 1%? HA! Even if US citizens HAD savings they surely wouldn't put them in bonds. Sorry Uncle Sam (US). I'm guessing there might be about $200 billion worth of sucker money AT BEST that might make it into bonds.

So, let's see... $1.8 trillion deficit, $200 billion in revenue... That means $1.6 trillion in brand spanking new money, hot off the printing presses! Yikes!

Brace yourselves for inflation.

I've Never Been More Bullish

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:16:53 GMT

Since 2007 when I first started tracking the price of gold, I have never been more bullish than I am right now.

Basically, I see no downside risk at all. Back in the fall of 2008, there was VERY STRONG buying pressure when gold fell below $900. I mean, so strong that there were gold shortages everywhere. Even the Indians were buying, and buying more than usual! So I can't possibly imagine gold going below $900 ever again.

According to my own research, the right price of gold is somewhere around 2000 current US dollars. That's where the upside potential equals the downside potential.

Basically, to calculate where the price of gold should top out, take the $850 price it was in January 1980, multiply by the change in money supply, and then multiply by the change in demand and divide by the change in supply. This calculation gives me $4700, using the supply & demand data from 1979.

The supply & demand data is available at Kitco's website, and M3 is available at nowandfutures.com.

Now I already identified $900 as a key support level. So now taking the geometric mean of $900 and $4700 I get just over $2000. That's the price necessary for the downside risk to equal the upside risk. Below that, gold is undervalued. Above that, gold is overvalued.

I'm pretty sure I can even put a date to when gold will go above $1000. Gold will be above $1000 by April of next year (2010). My guess is it will happen well before that date. Probably this summer.

Inflation vs. Deflation Debate

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:37:41 GMT

Let the debate begin!

Here's my 3-part YouTube video series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3