Archive for February 4th, 2007


The Housing Bubble

Scan through the posts on The Housing Bubble. Behind the dry-sounding statistics about increasing foreclosure rates, there’s a world of hurt going on. People are losing their homes. Worse, the loss they take on the house can be taxable and recent bankruptcy laws mean they may not be able to walk away from it.

It is insanity to give low-income first-time buyers a no money down, 100% financed mortgage, both for the owners who will lose the house, for the subprime company that made the loan (many such companies are going broke now), and for the banks who will eat the loans.

And when banks go belly up because of this, and they will, guess who pays for the bailout. The taxpayers. The rich get will subsidized yet again as the poor get shafted.

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He’s using Ubuntu at work, not Windows

Email from Daniel Rivera

I recently reformatted my work laptop which was running Windows. Now it runs Kubuntu Linux (Ubuntu with a KDE shell) 99.5% of the time. Whenever I have the need to definitely use Windows, I just run a remote desktop connection from Linux to a Windows server at work. Works like a charm. Oh, and the upgrades are free :) No stock options scandals, no random restarts, none of that.

Excellent. I just got back to using Ubuntu on a desktop after several weeks of being distracted by minor issues like fixing up the house to sell it. Easily got it to find the network hard disk and network printer. Now I’m doing all my blogging in it again. It’s both easier to use and more fun than Windows. And of course, it’s free.

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In-stream tidal power

In this new form of electrical generation, rotors mounted near the river bed turn quietly and pollution-free. They only have one moving part thus aquatic life can’t become snared.

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