Posted by Bob Monsour at 5:19 PM | Permalink

Posted by Bob Monsour at 3:41 PM | Permalink

Posted by Bob Monsour at 11:54 PM | Permalink

I've been working with Safari 4 since it was released. I moved all my Firefox bookmarks into it and got them organized in a similar way. After a week or so of using it as my sole browser, I've decided that I don't like it. Some of these issues may be to keystroke habits I've come to take for granted in Firefox, but others are definite shortcomings. Here's my list.

• When quitting, there's no way to save all the open tabs. This is major as I often end the day with a boatload of tabs open for later use.
• I would rather not have to hit cmd-F to start a find. I like that in Firefox I can just start typing and it starts an incremental search for what I'm looking for on the currently open page.
• I've gotten quite used to the fact that in Firefox a click in the address bar selects the entirety of the current page's address. Needless to say, Safari doesn't do this, but simply puts the cursor where you click.
Call me finicky, but I don't like that there's no refresh icon. I most often press cmd-R to do a refresh, so this is no big deal either way.
• I don't care for the screen full of recent pages visited that are laid out across the page when a new tab or window is opened. It was cool for a little while, but when I went to start using it, too often I spent more time trying to identify the page I was looking for than would take to get to it another way.
• I don't like the tabs being on top. I relate the tabs closely in my mind to the content of the page and having the toolbar, address bar and other chrome sitting between the tab names and the content doesn't work for me.
• I don't like that you have to click on the small hash area to move a tab. In Firefox, you can grab a tab anywhere and move it to the position you want.
• I don't like having the close box for a tab being on the left. I'd rather they had it on the right and put the hash area on the left.
• Finally, I don't like the keystroke combination needed to move from tab to tab and back.

That's about it for now. So for me, it's back to Firefox.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 7:17 PM | Permalink

We opened this evening's meeting of the board of trustees at Princeton Academy of the Sacred Heart with this prayer.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:14 PM | Permalink

If all the talk of billions and trillions, typically noted as $789 billion, or $1.5 trillion, were done in a way to make us feel like it were real money, would it not serve us all better to represent them as follows?

$789,000,000,000

$1,500,000,000,000

Posted by Bob Monsour at 3:31 PM | Permalink

Posted by Bob Monsour at 4:42 PM | Permalink

I just finished reading a fascinating series of 3 articles (in the Washington Post) that chronicled the rise and fall of the insurance giant AIG and their participation in the emergence of innovative financial products; specifically credit default swaps. You can find the 3 articles in the series at the links below:

Part 1: The Beautiful Machine, Dec 29, 2008

Part 2: A Crack in The System, Dec 30, 2008

Part 3: Downgrades and Downfall, Dec 31, 2008

A couple of key points...

1. The money-making play seemed to rely on the continued ability for AIG to maintain a triple-A credit rating. A difficult thing to do.

2. The Eliot Spitzer investigation into the relationship between AIG and General Re and the resulting resignation of Hank Greenberg as AIG's CEO was the first trigger to AIG's first credit rating downgrade.

3. Amazingly, AIG ceased writing new credit default swaps back in 2005, but by then it was too late already. The exposure to the subprime market was created and the cat was out of the bag. Imagine how much worse it would have been had they continued writing them well into 2006 and 2007.

4. The lack of regulation of credit default swaps, a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by Bill Clinton in late 2000, was key to the emergence of the entire credit default swaps market and its noted lack of transparency. Passage of the Act, sponsored by Senators Phil Gramm and Dick Lugar was lauded by Phil Gramm (then Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) with the following words. "The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 will now allow new and important financial products – single stock futures – to be sold in America. It protects financial institutions from over-regulation, and provides legal certainty for the $60 trillion market in swaps." The balance of his remarks on the Act can be read here.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 9:40 PM | Permalink

Visit the web site to learn more about this home.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 8:34 PM | Permalink

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:08 PM | Permalink