The Daily Cow

Truth be told that we live in a depressing contemporary society. Heads cringe at each cent added to the gas prices, eyes flail at every package put into Iraq, and more families come home knowing that their dollar is worth less and less. What used to be a nice fish on the table is now a nice loaf of bread. Who knows what will be on the table every subsequent day.

I would argue that some of the most innocent things left in today's world lies in the innocence of sports. You may counter by saying that there is none left there either. Understandably, while steroids and performance enhanced drugs have tainted the performance of athletes whom we thought were good, the true innocence lies in the simplicity of the game itself. The innocence lies in the fact that no matter how many weird things happen, no matter how many points, runs, goals, and touchdowns are scored, there is always a winner and a loser. The clarity is just not seen elsewhere, in politics, economics or finance, where there is always a story behind every storyline. And yes, I have had Jinghao laugh at me for this, and he probably thinks I don't delve deep enough: But alas, I read my news -- I just don't wish to read it to the point where I'm numbed by everything. To a degree, most of it just feels the same.

Perhaps this is why I find myself wandering to the sports section of the newspaper and Yahoo! everyday before reading the other news. There's always a sense of clarity and stability. Sure, my San Francisco Giants lose more than they win, and probably won't score enough runs to count for anything, but at least they play, and the put their heart in it. There is fairness to the fact that someone may have dropped a ball, grounded into a double play, or struck out to end the game. It just feels like there is a lack of that in politics. George W. Bush may want to extend the war in Iraq, and just sacrifices -- or rather, throws a bunch more soldiers and our tax money in it. That, is not fair.

Suffice to say, the most innocent of all of this is probably kids around the age of 10 playing sports. There is no money on the line, no endorsements to fight for, division title and incentive packages, and no need to play for a top pick in some draft. Its just parents, a hired umpire for $10/hour (maybe more) and a field in some neighborhood in America.

So here's to sliding triples, hanging sliders, and caught-looking strikes. To 10 foot jumpers, 3 foot layups, and clutch free throws. Something seems to be sane about the world of sports, something that other parts of society lack. Beyond the steroids, the enhancements, the Muscle Milk and the Power Bars, it all seems so pure, compared to the rat race of everything else.

I buy things that I perceive to be cheaper than what I think they are worth in the market. That's why I buy electronics that I rarely use. At times it's a curse.

When the solar stock I've been trading fell to 37 a share, I felt that it was sufficiently cheap enough to purchase, so I bought it and watched it race up to well over 42 dollars a share. Instead of selling it (since I believed its intrinsic value is somewhere around the mid 40s), I held it.

Now it's 28, but I don't have any money to get any more. I hate curses.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-real-time-quotes-on-google-f...

Way to ruin the mood by using the screenshot from one of the worst days on Wall Street to demonstrate Google Finance's real-time quotes.

How about a Federally-mandated cap on the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes? If x ppm is the current standard in 2008, reduce the cap to 90% of x ppm by 2010, 80% by 2011, ..., 10% by 2018, and 0% by 2019. By then people will have no chemical addiction that causes them to smoke.

Of course, combine this with an increasing tax on cigarettes, so that if y is the current tax per stick, double that to 2y by 2010, triple that to 3y by 2011, and finally 10y by 2018.

This double plan will make smoking increasingly undesirable by making the cost of doing so prohibitively high while the benefits nearly null. Smoking costs the world an immense amount of money in lost productivity and costs associated with bad health. This would be a good way to end the problem.

PHP has had exception handling (and try/catch) since its fifth version. I've been missing out.

NoScript, Adblock and Adblock Plus (the most popular plug-in for Mozilla Firefox) have been downloaded a combined total of over 55 million times from the Mozilla Firefox plug-in directory, and that isn't even counting the downloads from their independent sites and other tools that may be used to block ads such as Web Developer Toolbar! That means somewhere between 30 and 70% of all Firefox users use an ad-blocking plug-in.

Considering that Firefox had a market share of 18.41% in May, and that number has surely gone up with the successful release of Firefox 3, the 30-70% range is significant. With the estimate that Firefox now has a market share of 25%, which is not unreasonable because it had 28% market share in Europe before the end of 2007, we calculate that 7.5% to 17.5% of the world's Internet users use an ad-blocking plug-in.

Now let's consider a big example--Google. If you recall, the default search engine on Firefox is Google, and if you would agree that Firefox users are more likely to be Googlers than Internet Explorer users are, you would realize that a market share of 30% on Google is not inconceivable for Firefox users. With those numbers, that means 9% to 21% of the world's Internet users use an ad-blocking plug-in.

Here's the funny part: Adblock Plus with its default configuration does not block Google ads on Google. You would have to tweak the filters considerably in order to block the ads on Google. Considering the fact that Google is expected to earn 20 billion dollars in revenue in 2008, a loss of 9-21% in revenue is considerable--that's the equivalent of a number between 1.8 billion and 4.2 billion dollars.

Incredible.

Does that make you wonder whether Google, which strongly advocates for the adoption of Firefox (it even pays publishers a dollar for each Firefox user they refer--with the Google toolbar installed, of course), had any say in whether Adblock Plus would come installed with a filter that works for the ads that are displayed beside your search results?

Maybe, just maybe.

Meanwhile, these plug-ins are making it impossible for my ads on OriginXT to cover even half of the server fees. So Google has the extra 2-4 billion dollar windfall while I struggle to pay my bills. I guess this is how big business works.

What does it mean when someone says to you, "Honestly, ---" or "Frankly, ---"? Why should he/she feel the need to indicate that he/she is being honest in that particular instance? Perhaps because he/she isn't normally honest?

Why do people say that anyway? It seems silly.

According to the NYT, "the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects ... until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years." Understandably, "the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating."

This doesn't even make sense. At a time of accelerating growth like this, public assistance is absolutely crucial to a sustainable and fast growth in the industry. And plus, why are we delaying solar projects to study the environmental impact of solar when we know that coal and oil are so much worse?

American congressmen, you fail.

Israel wants America to attack Iran, potentially starting the third war since the start of this administration, none of which have completed yet. Although defense secretary Gates opposes a strike, Vice President Dick Cheney favors one. I don't think Bush will risk anything more, and I certainly hope he doesn't.

No more wars. Tell Israel to cool down or be attacked itself.