Dan Tohatan - News

Gold and Silver - Time to Sell?

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 02:13:56 GMT

It appears that gold and silver have been doing amazingly well this year. From the 2008 lows, gold is up about 80% and silver is up 125%. This is in US dollar terms.

In addition to that, gold is now near an all-time high in US dollars (about $1250), and silver is just about to break the $20 mark and possibly overtake its all-time high of $21 (reached back in March, 2008).

All of this begs the question - if the smartest thing to do as an investor is to buy low and sell high, is this one of those times when selling some gold & silver might be a good idea?

After watching more than a few videos and reading a few articles online to try to get a balanced point of view, I am somewhat leaning toward the idea that selling now would be a rather foolish thing to do.

Bulls vs. Bears

The consensus view among respected "contrarian" investors (like Marc Faber) is that the US dollar is headed for a 40-60% devaluation in the immediate future. This devaluation will be swift: it will happen virtually overnight. That would put the gold price up at $1750 - $2000 in the bullish camp.

In the bearish camp, we have those who say that gold is overvalued. I am one of those people right now. Yes, you read that right. I think that gold is overvalued. I think a "fair" price for gold - based on historical average salaries - would be closer to $900 now.

Based on historical average wages in the United States - data which is available to anyone - it appears that the gold : wage ratio is almost at the same level as it was in 1980, when gold reached a historic high.

Gold: Overvalued?

Strictly by looking at US wages in relation to the price of gold, one would conclude that the bull market in gold has pretty much run its course, and that it's downhill from here.

However, when you realize that interest rates are now at all-time lows (whereas in the 1980s they were at all-time highs), you begin to readjust your attitude slightly. The talk of the town now is "deflation." In the 1980s it was "inflation." This means that, if gold was able to reach $1250/oz in this environment, just imagine how high it could go in a truly inflationary environment which I believe is coming.

So while I think that gold is overvalued, I think it would be foolish to buy dollars (instead of gold) based on that fact alone. The US debt:GDP ratio has never been higher since World War II. The Dow:gold ratio is 8.5 - well above the historical minimum of 1 reached in the early 1980s.

If anything, what gold is showing us now, through its extraordinary strength, is that upside potential is enormous - higher than anyone would dare predict. It is also showing us how awful the US job market is: if gold has already reached a historic high ratio with respect to salaries, it means that if anything downward pressure on salaries is enormous, not necessarily that gold is overvalued.

Buy, buy, buy

In the end, my recommendation is to continue buying on any weakness in the gold market. The same goes for silver.

When you contemplate selling, you are faced with the obvious question - and buy what? The answer is, you can't buy anything other than gold & silver at the moment. Real estate is still declining, stocks are overdue for a correction, and bonds / money market accounts are yielding 2% or less.

I am expecting a sizable correction in gold & silver in the near future (up to 6 months). However, it could start at any price point ($1200 or as high as $2100). It's hard to predict when the correction will start, and until that point comes the only way is up (given that we are entering the classic period of positive seasonality for gold).

Again, my recommendation is to throw caution to the wind and just buy. Not because there is any particular reason to do so, but because those who sell right now (or don't buy enough) will regret it.

Announcing Vmana Beta Program

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:43:45 GMT

Today, the world of search is one step closer to revolution.

Vmana - the cloud-based commerce search engine - is entering beta on September 1, 2010. Starting today, we are accepting requests from users who wish to participate in the beta program.

The Vmana beta program is expected to run for at least two months. We plan to accept up to 200 beta testers; no more.

What is Vmana?

In a nutshell, Vmana is a hosted e-commerce search engine.

It supports filtering, facets, XML feeds, and all of the other bells & whistles of a top notch search engine.

It is fully managed, with a 100% up-time SLA (service level agreement).

Being a hosted solution, performance never suffers. We always grow capacity behind the scenes to meet demand.

Why is it a revolution?

Quite simply, this has never been done before. Especially not on the scale that it is about to be done.

As the cost of computing continues to decline exponentially (at a rate of ~40% per year), the time for providing high-level software APIs in the cloud is growing ever closer to the present. Vmana is one such example: a high-level search API sitting in the cloud.

Up until now, cloud computing has centered around the idea of providing low-level services (such as queues, storage, or CPU) to the user. This is akin to the days of time-sharing computers and dumb terminals.

The key to the future of cloud computing lies in the ability to provide high-level services (such as search). This is only recently becoming possible. Just as the evolution from the command line to the GUI required a certain critical performance level to be reached, we are now on the cusp of a major transition in cloud computing, from low-level "dumb" APIs to high-level "smart" APIs.

Vmana is a high-level API, which is why it is called "intelligent" search. That's why it's a revolution.

How is it being done?

Behind the scenes lies Lucene - a powerful open-source search engine. However, Lucene is just a tiny fraction of Vmana.

Vmana consists of a crawler, a search engine, and a management & administration dashboard.

Key features include: on-demand and automatic crawling, comprehensive logging, XML feed support (for input), XML search results, REST-style API, and more.

Why cloud?

There are several key advantages to cloud computing in general:

Guaranteed performance.
Guaranteed reliability.
You only pay for what you use.
Easy setup and deployment.

These are the advantages of Vmana over, say, an enterprise search appliance like the GSA (Google Search Appliance).

Why not a "bare bones" search engine like Lucene?

There are several disadvantages to doing that:

Steep learning curve.
Integration effort is costly.
Maintenance is difficult (often requires dedicated staff).
No analytics or reporting features.

The better question is - why live with those disadvantages?

Conclusion

A hosted search solution really makes sense when you take into account all of the disadvantages of the alternative solutions.

For those willing to try something new, it may be worthwhile to sign up for the Vmana beta program or learn more about Vmana.

Note - we are only accepting 200 beta testers in total.

Ray Tracing to Replace Rasterization by 2020

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 06:19:47 GMT

Say goodbye to polygons and shaders. Say goodbye to OpenGL and DirectX. The future, from this point on, is all ray tracing.

One chart - one image - shows it perfectly:

(Source: PC Perspective)

Ray tracing outperforms rasterization for large numbers of polygons.

There are many disadvantages to rasterization:

It is slow (linear in time) for large numbers of polygons.
It does not produce reflections very efficiently or accurately.
It cannot dynamically produce effects like refraction or shadows.
It relies heavily on textures (which use up tons of space!) to produce lighting effects.
Coding rasterized games is difficult because of the requirement to approximate every single lighting effect that would be calculated automatically using ray tracing.

Of course, rasterization does have one advantage (and one only), and that is that on present-day PCs, it can render scenes in real time at higher quality than ray tracing.

Throughout computing history, it has always been the case that temporary approximation techniques were phased out when enough computing power was available to do away with them. For example, the use of color palettes in the 1990s (i.e. 256 colors) disappeared as soon as there was enough GPU memory to store 32-bit pixel values. When resolutions rose to 800x600 and beyond, bitmap fonts could finally be replaced by True Type fonts. Pixels were gradually phased out of the graphics world in favor of ems or inches.

Notice that rasterization has dominated the PC gaming industry since the 1990s. Currently, ray tracing cannot produce scenes at 1080p resolution in real time without sacrificing quality severely. However, this will soon change.

The amount of increase in CPU power (from present levels) needed to allow rendering of ray-traced images at 1080p resolution at 24 fps is only about 10X. This will almost certainly happen before 2020.

There is a movie coming out (in 2012) that is supposedly rendered entirely in real time using ray tracing.

To close off, here is a ray traced image using a ray tracer that I built recently:

Notice the accuracy of the reflections and shadows, and how they come at no extra cost - virtually no performance penalty and no extra code required!

Technorati Inclusion

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:53:38 GMT

Here is my claim code -

KP4VFDRPWQ9T

If you're wondering what this is, I am submitting my blog to Technorati and they require that I post something on my blog in order to verify that I am the author of the blog.

The Technorati claim process is how you submit your blog to Technorati.

C# Serializable Dictionary - a Working Example

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 06:42:38 GMT

Here is the example:

using System;
using System.Runtime.Serialization;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;

[Serializable()]
public class SerializableDictionary<TKey, TVal> : Dictionary<TKey, TVal>, IXmlSerializable, ISerializable
{
        #region Constants
        private const string DictionaryNodeName = "Dictionary";
        private const string ItemNodeName = "Item";
        private const string KeyNodeName = "Key";
        private const string ValueNodeName = "Value";
        #endregion
        #region Constructors
        public SerializableDictionary()
        {
        }

        public SerializableDictionary(IDictionary<TKey, TVal> dictionary)
            : base(dictionary)
        {
        }

        public SerializableDictionary(IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
            : base(comparer)
        {
        }

        public SerializableDictionary(int capacity)
            : base(capacity)
        {
        }

        public SerializableDictionary(IDictionary<TKey, TVal> dictionary, IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
            : base(dictionary, comparer)
        {
        }

        public SerializableDictionary(int capacity, IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer)
            : base(capacity, comparer)
        {
        }

        #endregion
        #region ISerializable Members

        protected SerializableDictionary(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
        {
            int itemCount = info.GetInt32("ItemCount");
            for (int i = 0; i < itemCount; i++)
            {
                KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal> kvp = (KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal>)info.GetValue(String.Format("Item{0}", i), typeof(KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal>));
                this.Add(kvp.Key, kvp.Value);
            }
        }

        void ISerializable.GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
        {
            info.AddValue("ItemCount", this.Count);
            int itemIdx = 0;
            foreach (KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal> kvp in this)
            {
                info.AddValue(String.Format("Item{0}", itemIdx), kvp, typeof(KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal>));
                itemIdx++;
            }
        }

        #endregion
        #region IXmlSerializable Members

        void IXmlSerializable.WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer)
        {
            //writer.WriteStartElement(DictionaryNodeName);
            foreach (KeyValuePair<TKey, TVal> kvp in this)
            {
                writer.WriteStartElement(ItemNodeName);
                writer.WriteStartElement(KeyNodeName);
                KeySerializer.Serialize(writer, kvp.Key);
                writer.WriteEndElement();
                writer.WriteStartElement(ValueNodeName);
                ValueSerializer.Serialize(writer, kvp.Value);
                writer.WriteEndElement();
                writer.WriteEndElement();
            }
            //writer.WriteEndElement();
        }

        void IXmlSerializable.ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader)
        {
            if (reader.IsEmptyElement)
            {
                return;
            }

            // Move past container
            if (!reader.Read())
            {
                throw new XmlException("Error in Deserialization of Dictionary");
            }

            //reader.ReadStartElement(DictionaryNodeName);
            while (reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.EndElement)
            {
                reader.ReadStartElement(ItemNodeName);
                reader.ReadStartElement(KeyNodeName);
                TKey key = (TKey)KeySerializer.Deserialize(reader);
                reader.ReadEndElement();
                reader.ReadStartElement(ValueNodeName);
                TVal value = (TVal)ValueSerializer.Deserialize(reader);
                reader.ReadEndElement();
                reader.ReadEndElement();
                this.Add(key, value);
                reader.MoveToContent();
            }
            //reader.ReadEndElement();

            reader.ReadEndElement(); // Read End Element to close Read of containing node
        }

        System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema IXmlSerializable.GetSchema()
        {
            return null;
        }

        #endregion
        #region Private Properties
        protected XmlSerializer ValueSerializer
        {
            get
            {
                if (valueSerializer == null)
                {
                    valueSerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TVal));
                }
                return valueSerializer;
            }
        }

        private XmlSerializer KeySerializer
        {
            get
            {
                if (keySerializer == null)
                {
                    keySerializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TKey));
                }
                return keySerializer;
            }
        }
        #endregion
        #region Private Members
        private XmlSerializer keySerializer = null;
        private XmlSerializer valueSerializer = null;
        #endregion
}

The full C# file can be downloaded here: SerializableDictionary.cs

This class is both XML-serializable and binary-serializable. It is hard to find examples out there that do both.

10000 vs. 7200 RPM - Which is Faster?

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:31:06 GMT

Does RPM matter? It appears not. Read on to view the shocking results!

Tools Used

Dacris Benchmarks, version 8.0
Windows Calculator
Notepad

Hard Drives Compared

Western Digital VelociRaptor 150 GB - WD1500HLFS -- 10,000 RPM
Seagate 7200.12 1 TB - ST31000528AS -- 7,200 RPM
Samsung Spinpoint F3 500 GB - HD501LJ -- 7,200 RPM

Both of the 7200 RPM drives have 500 GB per platter density. The 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor has a density of 150 GB per platter.

The Showdown

Here are the hard drive benchmark scores for the drives tested:

Drive	Average Score (MB/s)	# of Samples
VelociRaptor	60.6	1
Seagate	54.0	4
Samsung	44.4	3

The results have been taken from the available reference results in Dacris Benchmarks.

It appears that the 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor is slightly faster (12%) than its closest 7200 RPM rival.

The 12% difference does not seem like much, given how much more the VelociRaptor costs, and how much less capacity you get.

Conclusions

As of this moment, you would do better to save your money and go for a large 7200 RPM drive rather than a small 10,000 RPM drive. It seems that the lower areal density of the VelociRaptor counteracts any positive effect that might be had from the higher spindle speed.

While the VelociRaptor is the fastest conventional drive out there (SSDs are faster), it is not significantly faster than a traditional 7200 RPM drive.

Dacris Benchmarks 8.0 Reviewed on Download3000

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:13:03 GMT

While randomly surfing the web (actually, I was searching for 'pc monitoring'), I stumbled upon an excellent review of Dacris Benchmarks 8.0, by Codrut Nistor of Download3000.com. It has only been up since June, so it is definitely newsworthy, especially since Dacris Benchmarks received the "editor's pick" award!

Here is a brief excerpt:

"Final Thoughts

I really love Dacris Benchmarks, and I guess that should be all of it. This program gets my pick and it should also get all your attention. I'll surely keep an eye on it in the future, since I know all this can be done even better. Excellent work guys, congratz!"

It is important to note that the reviewer ran Dacris Benchmarks on a not-so-recent machine, running Windows XP.

Read the full review to get a good idea of what the program can do. It's a lot more than you might initially think!

We plan to take the feedback we got from the review in order to make the next version of Dacris Benchmarks even better.

Also, to all who have submitted their results so far - thank you! We appreciate every submission we receive. Keep them coming!

WCF – A Gigantic Monstrosity from the Depths of Hell

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:37:52 GMT

So it seems everyone out there who wants to create REST services is using WCF to do it. I don’t know how this trend got started, but it’s wrong. You see, WCF was never made for the web. It was made to replace inter-process communication which used to be done through RPC. Then, it grew into a bloated Swiss-army-knife solution trying to solve all of the world’s problems, including (as it happens) REST. Sure it solves the problem, but not very well. Only if you accept the gigantic limitations that WCF imposes on you.

Trying to build a REST service with WCF is like trying to open a beer bottle with explosives. It will open, but then you’ve got a whole mess on your hands.

This week I’ve been struggling to do exactly that – set up a REST service with WCF. Given that I have shared web hosting (I know, poor old me) and have multiple sub domains hosted on the same IIS service, it proved to be impossible. The error: “This collection already contains an address with scheme http.”

Looking around on the web for a solution proved to be futile. It appears that unless you have a dedicated IIS instance just for your WCF REST service, it ain’t gonna happen.

Another thing that really makes my blood boil with WCF is the fact that tracing is so difficult. You have to use a proprietary tool to view a proprietary trace format – and that’s when you finally get it to work right. If you can’t get it to work (I couldn’t), the result is that you try to access one of your service methods and, if there's something wrong with the method, you only get a blank browser screen. No debug output, no exception message, nothing.

I then realized there’s a much easier way to make it happen. The answer is so staggeringly simple you will laugh…

Global.asax

Here’s how you do it:

Take out all the WCF junk from the web.config. God knows WCF likes to flood you with configuration.
Add one line to Global.asax.cs, in Application_BeginRequest:
MyService.ProcessRequest(HttpContext.Current);
Then, create a class called MyService, with a bit of reflection to figure out which service method to call (based on your URL and query string parameters), and a call to XmlSerializer to convert the return value to XML. One example (in my case, called SearchService), can be found here.

That’s it. Three easy steps! Now you have a REST service. No changes to your WCF service contract. Your interface can stay intact – even with the WCF attributes still on it!

So to those who want to implement a simple REST service without the hassle of WCF, here you go. From now on, I prefer not to use WCF unless I absolutely have to.

Project Vmana: Lucene.NET in the Cloud

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 08:39:49 GMT

An idea has been tossing & turning in my head for months now - 3 months actually. Rarely does an idea stick around that long without me finding some way to dismiss it.

The idea is a hosted customizable search engine, similar in ease of use to GSA (Google Search Appliance) but more capable - more like Lucene.

After searching for hours & hours for a decent hosted search engine, guess what? I found nothing.

The closest thing I was able to find was GAELucene (on Google Code). It's a Google App Engine version of Lucene. However, the index can only be read-only. It does not support a dynamic index. Without that, it's useless to me.

Hosted Applications - Some Examples

Just so you are less inclined to think I have finally lost my marbles:

IIS --> Windows Azure
SQL Server --> SQL Azure
Outlook --> Gmail
Backup --> Mozy
Bugzilla
SVN

There is a clear trend towards traditional server/desktop applications moving over to hosted services.

Getting a Customized Search Engine ... the Traditional Way:

These days, if you need a customized search solution, your options are as follows:

Purchase, deploy, and maintain a gigantic enterprise search application (e.g. Google search appliance, Endeca, FAST).
Integrate Lucene (or another free search engine) into your application (Java/ASP.NET) and develop your own management interface for it.
Drop the customization and integrate a basic Google search box into your web app, that can only index & search your HTML pages.

Clearly, none of these options are particularly appealing to a small or medium-sized business. Why?

- Option 1 is super-expensive. Not only is the entry cost in excess of $20,000, the cost of maintenance and operation also exceeds $10,000 per month.
- Option 2 is less expensive, although certainly not free, and very time consuming. It could take at least 5 weeks to get a working solution, resulting in more than $5,000 in development costs. Then there's the cost of hosting Lucene yourself. With a large index, you probably need a dedicated server - around $200 per month!
- Option 3 is super cheap, but it's not at all what you want. It's basically the same as giving up.

Is there a better way?

Yes! There is one more option - option 4. But nobody's built it yet.

Option 4 is a hosted search engine where you control what data flows in & how it comes out, but the management & maintenance is handled by someone else.

Think of it as cloud search.

Two words! Simple.

Enter Project Vmana. Thinking search? Think Vmana.

How would it work?

You go to vmana.com and sign up for your free entry-level search account.
Just like App Engine, Vmana is metered. Let's say your entry-level account has 500 MB of index space and 100,000 queries per month.
Using an easy-to-use admin interface, you configure your data sources:

You want some data to be pulled in from your blog, so you give it your RSS feed URL.
You want it to crawl your website, so you give it your home page URL.
You set up some exclusion lists using regular expressions to filter out unwanted URLs.
You have some custom objects with metadata that you will feed in with your own feeder application.

Vmana handles all of your object types & indexes them regularly. You can check your stats using the built-in dashboard.
Vmana provides a testing console - a simple web page where you can type in queries, see results, and build out customized result templates for use later.
You then use the Vmana XML API to send queries from your web application. Your web app just builds the query, sends it to Vmana, and retrieves the results in XML format. Then, you apply a bit of XSL and magic happens - you've got your fully-customized search results page.

How much development effort is involved? Probably about 5 days. Under $1,000.

The value in Vmana lies mainly in the management & admin interface. Lucene does not provide it. If you did option 2, you'd have to build it yourself from scratch. Building all that crawling logic and pretty reporting UIs is not that easy, which is why I said 5 weeks, and that's probably a conservative estimate!

Why "Vmana"? I like the name - it's short, and the domain was available. ;)

Summary

With Vmana, your costs are reduced to about one-fifth relative to comparable options and you get better value & peace of mind!

The project has already begun. Stay tuned for additional status updates - probably in about 3 days.

Release Schedule

The first phase is a working internal prototype that we can showcase via screenshots. That is probably about 2 weeks away. Following that, a public beta - if one happens at all - would arrive around late August. The quality would be similar to the App Engine beta or the Azure CTP. The beta would continue probably for at least two months. Expect heavy promotional giveaways during the beta (i.e. high quotas).

This is all I will divulge at this time. I have nothing more anyway.

Getting over the fear of asking

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:34:15 GMT

I have a strong feeling that for most people, the biggest reason for business failure or personal stagnation is due to the fear of asking. This applies to me, so it must apply to others out there.

Let's examine this for a minute. What are some fears that people have when it comes to asking?

Asking to be treated fairly in a relationship
Asking for what you feel you deserve to be paid, instead of what you think you can get
Asking others to allow you to speak & make a point
Asking the people you have wronged for forgiveness
Asking that your government representatives actually represent your interests for a change
Asking a girl out on a date

The list goes on...

It has always been a weakness of mine. I'm sure others are in the same boat. Why else would it be that so many people are having trouble making ends meet? They clearly accept their precarious financial situation. It's as if they are content with being poor. Just as in centuries past, people were content with being slaves.

The reason is always the same: they are afraid to ask.

Well, I don't know about you all, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm determined to get over my fear of asking. Whatever it takes.

This new modus operandi is called "being assertive." It is now my new quest.

I will start by getting over my fear of asking for $300/hr as my consulting rate. This is how it begins.

Stay tuned for status updates on my quest. This blog will be my journal on this exciting shift in paradigm.

Economic Update

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 23:23:44 GMT

It was April 29, 2010 when I called a top in the Dow. It looks like I hit the nail on the head there. Since the top (11,205), the Dow has plunged more than 1200 points. I think it's safe to say now that a bear trend has started that will continue well into 2011.

Now for my latest market call, buy silver now. The gold-silver ratio has just hit 70:1 after being in the low 60s for nearly a year. It's time to buy some silver.

In other news,

Sell in May and go away? Not this year!

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 11 May 2010 23:56:16 GMT

Gold has just reached a new all-time high today. It looks like gold is breaking out like a true champ.

There is an old adage among hard-core gold bugs: "Sell in May and go away." There is some truth to that statement. Gold's seasonality is such that the summer is usually a bad period, where gold does nothing and sometimes actually falls quite dramatically in price.

Well, this year is shaping up to be very different. This is a May breakout. I've never seen anything like it. It is totally counter-seasonal. This indicates enormous strength in gold right now.

What does this mean for the coming months? I think gold at $1800 before the end of 2010 is not out of the question. In fact, the likelihood of that is about 70%.

There is dollar devaluation afoot. The Euro is no longer a safe haven. Where do you put your rapidly-depreciating dollars? The stock market casino? Bonds that yield less than 3%? No. Real estate in a time of recession? No. Gold is the only thing left.

Maybe the old adage should be changed to "buy in May and go away."

That's It - I'm Calling a Top

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 01:47:38 GMT

The chief US economist at Deutsche Bank, Joseph LaVorgna, has just stated, "we're out of the woods for good." Apparently, the recession is over. People are spending, companies are making strong positive earnings, and it's "not just an arithmetic story. It's a story of legitimate growth."

OK. That's it. I'm calling a top. We're at Dow what now, 11,200? Well 11,200 is the highest it will be for a long time to come.

Where is the money supply recently? Let's see... the M3? Oh that's right, it's SHRINKING!

http://www.nowandfutures.com/key_stats.html

We are shrinking at a rate of -7.7% annually! Yikes!

Oh, and let's not forget the 9.7% unemployment rate that hasn't budged at all. How on earth can this be a real recovery?

Not only that, but recently I've noticed that a lot of bears have turned bullish.

But guess what, people ARE spending! Consumers ARE buying stuff, despite being unable to pay for it. Delinquencies are at all-time highs! This at a time when interest rates are ZERO!

What else? Oh, the Dow has been rising non-stop since March, 2009. We are now 13 months into this crazy rally, which is nothing more than a bear market rally.

So, to conclude, I'm calling a top. 11,200. This is it. Expect some big downward moves in the coming months.

P.S. My track record speaks for itself: in March, 2009 I called the bottom with my infamous post "Bottom". Then I qualified that by saying it WOULD get worse, in the long term. Well, now is the time for the resumption of that long term trend.

iPad: Perfect for people who fear computers

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:29:25 GMT

Apple introduced the iPad a few weeks ago, and while I almost vowed never to write an Apple-related article, I feel that the iPad is something I must write about, despite how much I hate Apple's non-free approach to ISVs. Sure, Apple's app store is highly restrictive and they've cut out large ISVs like Adobe, but the iPad is so revolutionary that I need to talk about it despite all of its shortcomings. Bash it all you want, but the iPad is a new category of personal computer. Plain and simple. Thanks to its large screen, it enables all the features of a full-sized computer without the scary aspects of viruses or configuration.

The iPad's interface is a move beyond the desktop metaphor that is easier to interact with and much cleaner. The move can be compared to the evolution from console interfaces to WYSIWYG ("desktop") interfaces. That move is now considered revolutionary. In the same way, I consider the iPad to be revolutionary. It introduces an interface metaphor that is revolutionary compared to the desktop metaphor.

While WYSIWYG interfaces have been around since the late 1960s, it was not until Apple introduced the interface in the 1980s that the GUI/WYSIWYG interface (a.k.a. the desktop metaphor) took off. In the same way today, Apple has introduced a new interface: the touch-screen interface. This interface was in fact introduced with the iPhone and has already proved to be hugely successful.

The Problem with Desktop Interfaces

The main problem with the desktop metaphor is that it is non-intuitive. It's a sort of remote-control interface for your PC. You use the mouse to move a cursor on the screen. In a sense, the mouse is just like a remote control. You do not "feel" the UI elements. Furthermore, you have all sorts of equipment just to interact with your PC. Indeed, the desktop PC is a very complex device, consisting of two input devices (mouse & keyboard), a strictly-output device (the monitor), and the PC itself (a big box that just sits there & makes funny noises).

Now let us examine the touch screen as an input (and output) device. It was first developed several decades ago. Some would argue it's been around since the 1980s, but it has not taken off until recently. In fact, the original Tablet PC by Microsoft was probably the first mainstream touch-screen device. It was introduced less than a decade ago. Since then, we've seen an explosion in touch-screen devices.

Ironically, Microsoft was the first company to introduce the touch screen to the mainstream. However, they were continuing to use the old desktop metaphor. The problem was that the input devices were no longer the same: the mouse was gone, and the keyboard became an on-screen keyboard. Thus, the desktop metaphor lost its efficiency and actually became harder to use on a touch screen than on a regular PC. This is why the Tablet PC failed.

The Solution: iPad

Apple has always been the first to introduce successful new interfaces in the computing industry (notice I said "introduce," not "invent.") With the hugely-successful iPhone, Apple stumbled upon a new user interface paradigm that was different from the traditional desktop paradigm. This new paradigm was much better suited to touch-screen devices. People who had previously shunned computers were now using apps and playing games on the new iPhone. The iPhone is effectively a computer. The only thing it lacks is a keyboard and a mouse.

Now, while the iPhone was enormously successful and proved to the world that the computer could still evolve, there were things that the iPhone still could not do simply due to its small screen size. Thus, the iPad was introduced, providing a larger form factor for the same interface that the iPhone popularized. A new PC was thus truly born.

Computing Made Accessible

Every great invention is initially ridiculed & vehemently denied. It is then, much later, accepted as self-evident. The same is the case for the iPad. It may not seem that revolutionary now, but the iPad is truly the next phase in the evolution of the PC. At last, we can move away from the mouse & keyboard and embrace touch screens. The new touch screen paradigm will make computers more accessible to a larger percentage of the population, facilitating the demise of print media and television/radio.

The iPad is much like Apple's Lisa - a journey into the unknown. It is a very rudimentary, unpolished product. Fundamentally, it's just a proof of concept. Ultimately, I expect that future generations of the iPad, along with new devices from competitors like Microsoft and Google, will demonstrate that the PC is still evolving and that the touch-screen tablet is just another successful move forward for the PC.

To the iPad bashers, I say, this device is probably not for you. But regardless, this device will make computing much more accessible to people who are not computer-savvy. While you can do anything with your PC (because you're a geek), for a lot of people the PC is still a mysterious device about which they know very little. These people will benefit greatly from a device that is much easier to learn and enables them to avoid the mysterious aura surrounding the traditional desktop PC.

The Future of the Desktop

Any article about the iPad would be incomplete without discussing the future of the traditional desktop PC. I believe the desktop PC will continue to exist for a long time. However, it will gradually transition from being an entertainment device back to being a business/productivity workstation. Basically, the desktop PC has many uses that touch-screen devices cannot replace. For example, if you're a graphic designer, you need the precision of a mouse in order to produce good artwork. If you're a programmer or writer, you need the speed of a real keyboard in order to type efficiently. These uses are likely not going to be replaced by touch-screen PCs.

I expect that the long term impact of the touch screen device will be that it reduces demand for traditional PCs somewhat. People who are somewhat afraid of a full-blown PC and only really use their PC for email & web browsing will opt to go with the touch-screen PC rather than the traditional PC. However, the reduction in demand for traditional PCs will be very small, since many people will likely purchase both - a traditional PC as well as a touch-screen PC.

There is no point in getting worried about the future of the desktop PC. The two types of PCs will coexist for a very long time, just like laptops & desktops have already coexisted for several decades with no ill effects. In fact, the biggest effect that the touch-screen PC will have on the overall PC market will be an expansionary one: the overall PC market (including all form factors) will actually expand significantly thanks to the now successful introduction of the touch-screen PC.

Significant Probability of Dow Correction

Dan Tohatan (Admin) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:29:12 GMT

I'll be brief. We are now at a point where the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is likely to correct substantially over the coming months. I assign this outcome a probability of over 40%, with a probability of virtually 100% that the DJIA will make a substantial correction by November of this year.

What do I mean by "substantial correction"? I mean 10% or more. This means about 1000 points or more. Likely far more.

So now where do I place the probability of a gain of 10% or more? That would mean the Dow hitting at least 11,800. I would put that at about 40%. The irrational euphoria has a high chance of going on much longer & much higher than anyone expects it to.

So given that, how should you act in this market? It is my belief that, at this point, buying the Dow is no longer worth the risk of it going down, possibly as much as 50%, over the coming months.

It is certainly time to sell the Dow, but not short sell it (yet). When it is time to short, I will post another announcement on my blog that we have hit the top.

Once again, to summarize, this is not the top. But at this point you should be cashing out & sitting on the sidelines.

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."

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.