Reinke Faces Life

If you missed Part 1, go here: http://tinyurl.com/yrl957

It would NOT make a lot of sense to dive right into Part2!

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Here’s Vanguard’s table, where they want to urge you to delay taking benefits until you capture the higher benefit. But it ignores how inflation rots your money!

*** begin quote ***

If you begin collecting Social Security benefits at And your monthly benefit* is By age 75, you will have received By age 80, you will have received By age 85, you will have received By age 90, you will have received
Age 62 $1,200 $187,200 $259,200 $331,200 $403,200
Age 66 $1,600 $172,800 $268,800 $364,800 $460,800
Age 70 $2,200 $132,000 $264,000 $396,000 $528,000

*** end quote ***

Able immediately collects 1200 at 62
Baker waits 3 years and collects 1600 at 65
Charlie waits 8 years and collects 2200 at 70

We need to consider that they die in each year until age 90, or elapsed time of 28 years. Then come up with what’s the average impact on their wealth.

We can assume that they will “save” it since premise #1 is if the need it then they would take it and use it.

If we assume that investment returns will sort of match inflation, then we can ignore that factor.

Able at age 62 gets his first check for 1200. Those dollars are different in purchasing power than Charlie’s first check for 2200 eight years later. So we have to do all calculations in constant dollars assuming 5% inflation.

So, in year one, a dollar received is worth 95 cents. In year 30, that dollar is worth 0.226 in constant dollars.

(See spread sheet below as a I run the numbers!)

Wow!!

Stunning as it may sound, in constant dollars, Able is the clear winner. This says that regardless of when they actually die, Able is always a winner.

It highlights another question. What about taxes? Factoring taxes, say 25% on the ½ of ssi payment is that enough to overcome Able’s head start in collecting?

Your comments?

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Year Discount Able Baker Charlie
1 1.000 14400
2 0.950 13680 28080 0 0
3 0.903 12346 40426 18240 0
4 0.857 10585 18240 51012 33879 0
5 0.815 8622 15639 59633 46616 0
6 0.774 6671 12738 66305 56472 0
7 0.735 4904 9856 71209 63718 0
8 0.698 3425 7245 18436 74634 68777 18436
9 0.663 2272 5060 12231 76906 72134 30667
10 0.630 1432 3357 7709 78337 74249 38376
11 0.599 857 2116 4615 79195 75516 42991
12 0.569 488 1267 2625 79683 76236 45616
13 0.540 264 720 1419 79946 76626 47035
14 0.513 135 389 728 80081 76826 47763
15 0.488 66 200 355 80147 76923 48118
16 0.463 31 97 165 80178 76968 48283
17 0.440 13 45 72 80191 76988 48355
18 0.418 6 20 30 80197 76996 48385
19 0.397 2 8 12 80199 77000 48397
20 0.377 1 3 5 80200 77001 48402
21 0.358 0 1 2 80200 77001 48403
22 0.341 0 0 1 80200 77001 48404
23 0.324 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
24 0.307 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
25 0.292 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
26 0.277 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
27 0.264 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
28 0.250 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
29 0.238 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404
30 0.226 0 0 0 80200 77002 48404

80200 77002 48404
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http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2007-07-17_D8QEFI3O1&show_article=1&cat=breaking

Microsoft Copy Protection Cracked Again
Jul 17 01:13 PM US/Eastern
By JESSICA MINTZ
AP Business Writer

*** begin quote ***

SEATTLE (AP) – Microsoft Corp. is once again on the defensive against hackers after the launch of a new program that gives average PC users tools to unlock copy-protected digital music and movies.

The latest version of the FairUse4M program, which can crack Microsoft’s digital rights management system for Windows Media audio and video files, was published online late Friday. In the past year, Microsoft plugged holes exploited by two earlier versions of the program and filed a federal lawsuit against its anonymous authors. Microsoft dropped the lawsuit after failing to identify them.

The third version of FairUse4M has a simple drag-and-drop interface. PC users can turn the protected music files they bought online—either a la carte or as part of a subscription service like Napster—and turn them into DRM-free tunes that can be copied and shared at will, or turned into MP3 files that can play on any type of digital music player.

*** end quote ***

Like an arms race, the DRM folks are spending a lot of cycles on a failing paradigm.

Like putting lipstick on the proverbial pig, it annoys their paying customers and is pretty ugly! Some of my biggest irritations, in my computing career, have been at the hands of “copy protection”. Couple that with bad, or non-existent, support and you have the seeds of a revolt.

I now don’t buy content online — music or other kinds — if it has copy protection. I have a lot of expensive 8 tracks, cassettes, and cds of “content” that are unusable. Add to that “software”, which has stopped working, stopped being supported, or otherwise orphaned.

My most recent experience was with MusicMatch JukeBox being acquired by Yahoo and forced to “upgrade”. This was one of my last purchases, excuse me “licensing” — what “barbara streisand”!! — before my new policy of “no more”.

“No more” locked content. “No more” buying software, excuse me licensing it, from vendors who are one step below used car salesmen. “No more” operating systems that require “activation” and have “self-help” provisions.

I look to the open source software makers and happily “donate” to their projects.

I’m calling out the content makers, “software” licensors, and the entire Microsoft empire as the hucksters they are. At least the snake oil sales men of yesteryear didn’t try and make you “license” the bottle! A plague on all their houses.

Imagine how I’ll be when I get old and crotchety!
fjohn

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http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2007/071007-backspin.html

Technology for the People by the Money
Backspin By Mark Gibbs, Network World, 07/10/07

***Begin Quote***

A new federal rule is now in effect that means SDR/CR systems that use “open source elements” will find it hard to get FCC approval or perhaps be excluded altogether.

The FCC’s reasoning – inexplicably prompted by Cisco, of all companies – is that manufacturers should not use open source software “if doing so would increase the risk that … security measures could be defeated or otherwise circumvented to allow operation … of the radio in a manner that violates the Commission’s rules.”

This means that what the FCC and Cisco apparently want are unhackable software products! As Homer Simpson would say, “Du-oh!” Gentlemen, you must know that there is no such thing and anyone with the slightest clue will tell you that security through obscurity has never and will never work.

***End Quote***

Gooferment “protecting” you from those evil companies!?!

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He knocks the ball out oft he park. He took every liberal topic and precisely defined what he’d do. No ifs, ands, or maybes. And, he appeared to be well received. The new citizen who flew down from Seattle with a check was the most eloquent witness.

read more | digg story

http://product.thinkfree.com/products/

ThinkFree Online

***Begin Quote***

ImageManage, access, and edit documents over the internet. Get the best Microsoft Office compatibility available. Share and get everyone’s input on your story, schedule, or marketing materials.

***End Quote***

THINKFREE is messing with my neatly laid out paradigm (i.e., consultant speak for how one looks at the world).

In the beginning, there was the (big mainframe) computer and it had input devices (i.e., punched cards) and output devices (i.e. printers). And after that everything got complicated. IBM’s SNA allowed intelligence and processing power to escape from the mainframe datacenter and go “native”. Then came IP and someone eventually hung one of them new fangled personal computers and there was a paradigm shift.

So we now have a zero footprint web browser, a thin client (i.e., gotomypc and it’s ilk), a fat client like some of the universal instant messengers or Microsoft Outlook, and (obese) clients that are servers like SBS that can do everything with or without the network.

THINKFREE has ONLINE (zero), DESKTOP (fat), SERVER (obese), and (now) PORTABLE (that acts like my uninstalled life).

You have to dig for pricing, but it looks like $50 except for server where they don’t tell you the price. (Always a bad sign.)

The free online will have premium options as yet unpriced. (Always a bad sign).

And, it still doesn’t integrate email.

I’d classify it as Zoho’s stupid brother!

Except for the blurring of the lines between online and offline. In that sense, it’s innovating. (IMHO)

You really want to be able to work without having to think about your connectivity status or what hardware you have available.

Looking at the DESKTOP minimum requirements, it’s very hefty.

In summary, it’s an interesting dead end that could be expensive.

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http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/eleven-lessons-.html

Eleven lessons learned about blogging, so far
* Marc Andreessen
* Jul 10, 2007

***Begin Quote***

Fifth, writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits.

I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly).

Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base.

This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers.

***End Quote***

Clearly, a blog is a light weight way to update your web pages quickly. Stale content on a web page is the kiss of death. Blogs are really nothing more than a web page with content rolling out like “toilet paper”. (A deliberately chosen metaphor.)

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CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION ON MLPF

>But, I say pity the poor soul who thinks that America’s only wealth is
>measured in tax dollars.

It’s not that I think America’s wealth is measured in tax dollars. That’s a negative measure; it’s the load on the vitality of Americans. The sand in the economic engine. The friction. Tax dollars are a measure of how much is REMOVED from some American’s investment account. Taxes are opportunities that can never be taken by the original earner. If you earn 100k from MLPF or Alba earns his 100k from JibberJobber AND you each lose 50k to taxes, then you and he can NOT invest in my latest get rich scheme — color coded name tags for families at wakes to tell who’s from what side of the deceased’s family. It’s a real winner!

Seriously, taxes deprive you and Jason from using your 50k as you see fit. Invest it, spend it, throw a party for all the MLPFers, or give it to your favorite charity. It’s YOUR money. It’s STOLEN from you at gun point. It’s nothing more than other people robbing you to use the sweat of your brow to feather their nests, reward their friends, and punish their enemies. The “good works”, that incidentally they use the illusion of legitimacy to do, hides the fact that they are using the proceeds of theft. Why if I steal your 50k and give it to the Salvation Army, do I go to jail? But the gang in DC steal your 50k, call it taxes, give a bureaucrat a job, throwing a bone to some purpose or other, and we’re all supposed to applaud them for the “service”? The hidden problem is that whatever you were going to do with your profits doesn’t get done. It right out out the Economics 101 “the broken window” fallacy. Society is a net loser when wealth is used to fix the broken window because it was NOT available to do something else. We see the window, but we don’t see all the effects of the action precluded. So too, we see “Seattle” but we can’t see what it precluded!

There’s a reason that taxes are compulsory. No one would pay them if there weren’t.

Gooferment “sells” us “services” that we don’t want at prices we can’t afford. Compare it to the “free market”. Not some of the nonsense where an industry is “regulated”, but a real free market, like the computer hardware market. If you want to “sell” me a service, then you have to satisfy my needs. If I’m in the least way dissatisfied, I have choices. If the gooferment “sells” me a service and I’m not satisfied, there’s nothing I can do.

>America’s greatest asset is attitudinal.

America’s greatest asset is the liberty that allows us to “be all that we can be”. We are the beneficiaries of a lucky happenstance of the American experiment. The Classical Liberals have freed us from oppression by Kings, Churches, and random gangs of thugs. They given us the “invisible hand of the marketplace”, the “division of labor”, and “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”. They weren’t perfect by a long shot, but they gave us a huge start. We’ve, like the Prodigal Son, squandered or birthright by being lazy. Lazy in our thinking; that gooferment could give us something for nothing. Lazy in our complacency; that we need to always reinvent ourselves to take advantage of opportunity. Lazy in our faith; faith in our own abilities, the honesty of our fellow men, faith in the universe that gives us all we need. We’ve allowed gooferment to take over charity (i.e., welfare), education (i.e., indoctrination), and basic slew of other stuff!

Sorry, but we’ll have to disagree agreeably on the value of Seattle’s innovation. I’d be looking for the “hidden opportunities” that the “Seattle innovation” precluded.

fjohn

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Responding to an MLPF comment about Seattle Schools using tech in educational themes.

***Begin Quote***

>Now that is innovative thinking and the administrators of the Seattle Public Schools should be congratulated!
{Extraneous Deleted}
>What say you?
>Jay Deragon
>Social Networking Strategist

*** end quote ***

I say pity the poor Seattle taxpayers who had their wealth stolen so that some highly paid bureaucrats could mess with other people’s children all at the point of a gun. (Don’t pay those taxes and see what happens. Don’t send your children to gooferment skoolz and see what happens.)

Sorry, but making happy videos and playlists isn’t education. It’s glorified babysitting and brainwashing. There are hungry people around the world learning in the pressure cooker of poverty to “eat these kid’s lunch”. In a day and age, when we should be first in a whole bunch of categories, we’re last in just about everything that matters. (We may be tops in “I felz gud abut myself”!)

Congrats, you have to be kidding us.

No, I think that we as a society in the USA have “really screwed the pooch”. We, deluded by our politicians (No one can say we don’t have the best money can buy!), have a track record of bad decisions. Just to name a few of our mortal sins: The Civil War, All the various Wars to <insert favorite slogan> creating the American empire, Leaving the Gold Standard, Creating the Federal Reserve, Permitting the Income Tax, Prohibition, Social Security, Creating the ‘dole” of New Deal programs, Bombing Hiroshima – Nagasaki – Dresden, Gooferment Education, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, Medicare / Medicaid, and countless venial sins.

IMHO “our” action plan, that of the USA, should be to: end the “dole” (i.e., welfare to individuals and companies); end “public” education; return to honest money; bring the troops home from the 170 countries becoming like Switzerland and instituting a MYOB foreign policy; and cut the gooferment down to a tenth of what they are today by getting back to strict Constitutional interpretation.

See empires can’t sustain themselves.

As innovative Power Forum members, we should be able to see where the future is taking us and not just “go along for the ride”. The essence of “seeing the future” is to be able to avoid the pitfalls. Else, we are nothing more than the Delphi Oracle with a neat tool (i.e., the crystal ball). We can tell people what’s going to happen but we can’t change “their destiny”. I think we can. But it calls for some “heavy lifting”. First is, at the very least, to be judicious with our “congrats”. If I was going to give kudos to anyone in education, it would be those in the “home schooling” movement. They are demonstrating success. Then maybe I’d look to the private and parochial schools who educate in direct competition with the gooferment’s free education. They are demonstrating success. Then, maybe I’d look to the various “bees” (i.e., the National Spelling Bee; the National Geography Bee) who are seeking to make “learning” kool. Then, I laude people like Bill Cosby, Walter Wiilliams, and others who are castigating the culture of “being dumb is kool”.

No, I’d say that is NOT innovative and we should NOT send Seattle congrats. Sorry to be the bearer of an opposing point of view. Wish I could be funny and make a joke. But this is “funny”. Not “funny haha”. But “funny sad”.

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One criticism I have of Google, and it’s pretty severe, is that they have made a mess of authentication. Gmail, Google Accounts, and Gwhatever each with their own userid password combinations has one more than one occasion wasted a ton on my time. Throw in their acquisition of BLOGGER and it’s a total mess. It feels like it’s checking old cookies. Sure I can nuke ALL cookies and muddle around until I get it working, BUT that means I lose all the preferences and stuff set up for other sites that have done nothing wrong. If there is one thing that keeps me from imbibing in the google kool aid is their continued mucking up of something as simple as sign on. They also have taught me with their mucking up of the Google Desktop Search tool that the entire web20 paradigm is the suspect because you’ve lost control of what’s running and what it does. Although the recent acquisition of MusicMatch by Yahoo is that buying software, oh excuse me “licensing” (what “barbara streisand” is that), is no guarantee of software stability. It just demos that you can run a stable production environment on a WINDOZE and WEB20 as an OS ain’t much better. To me it proves the worth of Open Source. And, Linux. At least your sunken monetary cost is zero and you have a lot less to complain about.

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