This is a new blog, with few posts. My tweets will likely be more reliable.
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posted Dec 28, 2011 10:27 AM by Andrew Madigan
No, this isn't a list of New Year's resolutions, I don't do that. Instead I've come up with a few reforms to our legal system that I believe would change things for the better. These are in order of importance.
1. No Limited Liability for Corporations Don't panic, I'm not talking about eliminating limited liability completely. Instead, I think that only natural persons should be eligible for limited liability. For instance, if Corporation A owns 30% of Corporation B, and Corporation B goes out of business with debts of $100 million, then Corporation A is responsible for $30 million. The reasoning behind this is to prevent corporations from creating under-capitalized sub-corporations in order to avoid liability. As an exception, Corporation A would not be held responsible for Corporation B's bonds (those are priced on the basis of Corporation B's credit). Corporation A would be responsible for a portion (dependent on ownership share) of Corporation B's legal judgements, contract payments, government fines, and other liabilities.
As an exception, mutual funds and other investment vehicles would retain limited liability. However, liability would pass through to any corporation that owns shares in the mutual fund or vehicle. This way, a corporation cannot create a an investment vehicle to retain the old liability rules. If a mutual fund owns 40% of Corporation B, and Corporation A owns 10% of the mutual fund's shares, then Corporation A is liable for 4% of Corporation B's debts.
Again, natural persons who own stock would not be subject to any of these rules, and would retain limited liability as before.
2. Plaintiff may not offer settlement Plaintiffs should not be permitted to offer a settlement of less than the amount they intend to pursue in court. A defendant may make such an offer, and the plaintiff may accept the offer, but the plaintiff may not communicate how much they are willing to accept. This is to combat a tactic used regularly by copyright trolls such as the RIAA, MPAA, and Las Vegas Review-Journal. The troll threatens to sue under the Copyright Act (which provides excessive statutory damages, as much as $150,000 per infraction) but offers a quick settlement, as little as $5000 to cover all past infractions. In addition to the high statutory fees, this tactic relies on the fact that a lawyer would likely cost the defendant more than $5000. If the troll were not permitted to offer a settlement, then their lawsuits would go to court far more often. The troll's case is often weak (as demonstrated recently by the Las Vegas Review-Journals hired gun, Rightshaven, and demonstrated numerous times by the RIAA) and so forcing them to prove their case in court would likely stop many of these lawsuits before they even began.
3. Loser Pays All (English Rule) In lawsuits, the loser should pay all of the court expenses of the winner. This means when a plaintiff brings a case they take on a significant risk that they will be forced to pay the defendant's legal fees. Likewise, if a defendant chooses to fight a case rather than settle, they take on the risk of costly litigation fees for the plaintiff's lawyers, as well as their own. In the U.S., we currently have a dumbed-down version of this rule, in that a judge may order these payments if the case is found to be baseless, but this is relatively rare. It's still very possible to end up paying more in legal fees than one wins from the defendant. Let's say a contractor manages to do $20,000 in damages to your house, well over the limit for small claims court. Recovering those damages could be very difficult. If the contractor refuses to make the payment immediately, you'll need to hire a lawyer, which will likely take a good chunk of the damages you're entitled to. Even though the case may be clear-cut, the contractor knows that the cost of the lawyer is high enough that you're unlikely to sue. Under the English rule, with such a case (a good chance of victory for the plaintiff) the contractor knows he will have to pay for your lawyer if he doesn't pay for the damages immediately. |
posted Nov 9, 2011 10:02 AM by Andrew Madigan
In this time when everyone is complaining that stores are putting out Christmas decorations too early, I thought I'd put my thoughts "on paper".
I don't care for Christmas, or at least not the way it's celebrated in the U.S. It's far too materialistic and religious, it's as though we as a people feel bad about spending so much money, so we go to church for 'absolution' to make ourselves feel better about something we really know is wrong. Like ridiculously skinny models in teen magazines, it creates a stereotype that few can live up to. Families rack up huge credit card bills to keep up with the Joneses, at a time when financially they should be saving up for higher energy bills.
Now don't get me wrong, Christmas has its place. For kids (by kids I mean those who haven't yet started working full-time) the presents are great. For kids up to say 11 or 12 there's plenty of toys out there to buy, and they love tearing through the wrapping paper. Once you enter the working world, you find that first, buying gifts that cost more than $50 or so gets extremely expensive for a fair sized family, and second if you want anything that costs less than $50 you can probably save and buy it yourself. Even worse, you can end up buying something the other person doesn't want, but they also don't want to return it. So you end up spending $25 on a gift for them, they spend $25 on a gift for you, and neither of you use it. This just leaves everyone a bit poorer.
Now, from an economic perspective someone will claim this "drives the economy", but that's a non-sensical argument. Buying useless stuff to move money around is equivalent to the broken window fallacy. All you really do is create more trash. Plus, encouraging the build-up of so much debt seems incredibly irresponsible in our new era of "austerity" and unemployment.
Then there's the religious aspect to the whole thing. Now pretending that we're a "Christian nation" is false. We're a nation of Christians, Catholics, Jews, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Ba'hai, and many others. Evangelicals in particular seem bent on forcing everyone to celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday. But rather than focusing on the increasingly divisive issue of religion, America should have secular holidays in the spirit of a proper democratic republic. December 25 was of course the Winter solstice on the Roman calendar. In fact I would think it would be far easier to romanticize the idea of family gathering together to keep warm on the shortest (darkest) day of the year.
So let's have a new holiday. In fact, let's call it Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is much better than Christmas anyway, since it focuses more on family gathering, which is much more important (plus food, everyone loves food). The date of Thanksgiving need not be in November, so let's call December 21 Thanksgiving. We can have an image of family gathering together on the darkest day, treats and small toys for the kids (no buying your kid a laptop for New Thanksgiving). We can even still have "12 days". We'll call it the 12 days of the new year: December 21-January 1 can be recognized nationally as the "holiday season". Business can wind down for end-of-the-year bookkeeping and inventory. Most people can enjoy some well-earned time off visiting their family or traveling to somewhere sunny with their end-of-year bonus. Certainly December 21 and January 1 would be national holidays. December 21 would be Thanksgiving (so no more holiday in November) and Black Friday would be eliminated (it's a disgusting display of materialistic capitalism anyway).
Santa can stay though the whole idea is really a bit silly. We can even have Thanksgiving trees. Perhaps instead of hanging trinkets on them we can hang pictures of loved ones. |
posted Jul 26, 2011 6:09 PM by Andrew Madigan
I've started using Google+, so far to me it basically seems like Google's Facebook, but with better privacy controls. I started using Facebook at RIT, before it was open to high schools or the public. It's different now, with games and advertisements galore. I wonder what Google+ will look like in a few years. For now, it's very nice.
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posted Jul 26, 2011 6:06 PM by Andrew Madigan
I've left Paychex for greener pastures at Element K, which sells a hosted learning management solution. I'm very happy there thus far. |
posted Feb 9, 2011 8:34 AM by Andrew Madigan
Over the next two years, debit cards are going to change. In January 2012, the fee that merchants pay for debit card transactions from large banks will be capped at 12 cents. In January 2013, all debit cards (regardless of bank size) will have to support two unaffiliated payment networks (the idea being that the networks will compete on fees). Here's my predictions on the results:
1. No change in pricesThe idea behind these rules was to reduce the fees paid by merchants, perhaps with the hope that this savings would be passed on to consumers. This is a fantasy, similar rules are in place in Australia - with no effect on prices. Current fees are in the 2-3% range, plus a fixed fee of 15-25 cents. This means something that costs $9.99 has a fee of around 35 cents. Do you really think the retailer will cut the price to $9.64? This might have an effect on certain high financial items, like insurance, and it might mean that some companies that previously rejected cards will allow debit cards, but it will not have an effect on prices.
2. Increase in bank fees, reduction in bank customersIncreasing checking account fees are already a reality. All of the major banks are increasing fees and/or requirements to have an account. This will naturally mean some people close their accounts entirely, opting instead to rely on "no checking account" services. This will ultimately mean more money for those who prey on low-income individuals, and fewer people able to participate in the online marketplace.
3. Customer confusion, reduced card acceptanceAs these rules start to go in effect, retailers will start to make customers aware of the differences between their cards. Signs advertising which card brands are accepted could be replaced with which banks are accepted (only those larger than $10 billion and thus subject to the 12 cent cap). There are 74 banks that are subject to the cap, so a more likely scenario is that those banks or networks apply a logo to their cards which guarantees the fee is 12 cents or less. In any case, customers of smaller banks will find that their cards are not accepted. Likewise, credit card acceptance will drop since fees on those have not changed. Customers will be expected to know which debit card networks their card supports ("Sorry, we only accept Visa cards with a Plus logo").
Note: While 74 banks have more than $10 billion in U.S. deposits, it's unlikely that all of them issue debit cards.
So, the net effect could be that consumers are forced to get accounts at large banks, many of which will charge fees in order to hold an account. Small banks will be forced to either match the 12 cent cap, or see their cards rejected by retailers. 4. Stronger push for credit cards by banksWhile checking account and debit card revenues drop, credit cards have been virtually untouched. They still have the same interchange fees, with the added bonus that customers with poor money management skills will generate enormous interest revenue. Chase is already running programs to encourage checking account customers to open credit cards, and vise-versa. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing banks issue ATM cards that are actually credit cards for purchases. That is, when you swipe the card at a retailer or use it online, it's a credit card, but if you use it at an ATM it accesses your checking account.
On the plus side, in trying to drum up credit card business, banks might improve their rewards programs. 5. More business for online banksOnline banks have a huge advantage when it comes to costs. Personally, I keep my money in an Ally Money Market account. I get free checks, free ATM access (they re-imburse any fees you are charged by the ATM owner) and 1.09% interest. For the rare instance that I have a real check, they provide free postage-paid envelopes to send them in. There are no hold times for customer service, just call the number, press zero (it tells you to, the other option is the automated banking system), and a person picks up very quickly. I keep my transactions at less than 6 per month by using a credit card for normal purchases (paid off at the end of the month). They also have a checking account that pays .5% interest if you don't want the 6 transaction limit.
Ally will be subject to the 12 cent cap, but there's little indication that they're dependent on interchange fees. They also don't have an overdraft "protection" program. Instead, they might allow POS/ATM overdraft without a fee at their discretion. For checks and automated payments, an overdraft will trigger a $9 fee, but that can only be charged once per day, and only if you will overdraft by $10 or more. I have never actually overdrawn my Ally account, but I think that policy is a good demonstration of how they do business. |
posted Dec 23, 2010 5:41 AM by Andrew Madigan
First off, I'll admit I am in no way involved with the Cable TV-industry, I don't even have cable. I cancelled it when I realized I was paying $80/month to watch TV. I do have Netflix, and I record some shows OTA using a setup that's a bit too complex to ever spread widely.
Everyone has heard of the disputes between cable companies and broadcasters recently. Neither side is likely to get much public support. Cable companies overcharge their customers while broadcasters are asking to raise cable bills for something that they broadcast for free (with advertising). Right now in Rochester there's a dispute between Time Warner and Sinclair which affects our local Fox affiliate, WUHF. In all likelihood, Sinclair will lose. Time Warner doesn't need to worry about losing Fox affiliates since they have a separate agreement with Fox allowing them to broadcast network shows. If Time Warner stopped broadcasting American Idol or The Simpsons they might lose a few subscribers, but no one will leave because they can't watch one particular news broadcast.
This doesn't apply to all disputes. If Time Warner had a dispute with any of the Big Four they would risk losing subscribers. They're certainly already losing some to high bills. In a world where we can custom-order virtually anything online and we can buy a game for our iPhone for $1.99, $70-80 for "standard" cable TV is just too much.
A la carte pricing seems obvious, but it's not quite good enough. Cable companies would likely just create small bundles, while ensuring that subscribers have to buy several of them to get the 10 or so channels they really want, and they'll still have to pay for the Golf Channel. Instead, cable companies should establish something akin to the iPhone App Store. Allow networks to put up their channels in a marketplace, with the cable company getting a cut (say 30%) of the subscription fee. Limits would have to be placed on how many channels could be bundled into any one item, but this would mean that if a channel wants to raise its fee it has to go to the subscriber, not the cable company. The base cable package in this case would only consist only of channels the cable company is required to carry (public access), free channels (PBS?) and channels they're paid to carry (QVC). The fee would represent the cost of maintaining the cable network, plus a profit margin. In fact, my guess is that eventually their would be no fee for the base cable package, it would be included with cable internet.
Google TV could follow the same model. With their massive fiber network they could likely deliver channels directly without much bandwidth worry. There's a few problems with this plan, though: - Google doesn't have relationships with the media companies
- It's completely different from the current Google TV model (which is basically a browser for your TV)
- The cable companies are also major ISPs, they would likely try to block such an obvious threat to their business
- Chicken and egg problem: to get lots of channels they needs lots of subscribers and vise-versa
- fin |
posted Aug 2, 2010 3:22 PM by Andrew Madigan
I see today on the BBC that HSBC reported their pre-tax profits doubled to 11 billion pounds this year. I also got a letter today from HSBC telling me they were removing one class of account I held and replacing it with a different type with a monthly maintenance fee. They're also going to start charging $1.50 for withdraws from any ATM other than their own. Between these two, I no longer have any reason to keep my accounts with HSBC. Once I have my finances in order, I'll be moving to another bank. I plan to eventually move most of my spending to a credit card (paying it off each month) so I'm concerned mostly about ATM fees (still need cash sometimes) and interest rates (I'm keeping the money in the bank so that it earns interest).
Not to sound like an advertisement, but Ally seems like the best choice. They refund ATM fees and have good interest rates. Their doesn't even seem to be a limit on their ATM fee refunds, which is good because the ATM at my new office charges $2.50. It would cost me $4 to use that ATM with HSBC, or $0 with Ally. I wouldn't be able to use HSBC ATMs anymore, but I could go to Wegmans instead. They provide prepaid envelopes to make deposits on those few occasions that I get paper checks. They also provide free checks. I also looked at ING Direct because they link with ShareBuilder, but they don't provide ATM refunds. |
posted Jul 13, 2010 4:45 PM by Andrew Madigan
Recently, I've been thinking about building a new server. Basically, I want a good storage & media server, but I also want to be able to use set up a custom router. For media serving, my client is generally my PlayStation 3, using PS3MediaServer. I serve recordings from GBPVR to the PS3. For storage, I'm accessing the data from a Windows 7 laptop, and need fast searching capability. Windows 7 has a great feature where the indexing service in Windows XP/Vista/7 can be remotely queried. This means that if I run Windows file sharing on my server the client can search it instantly without having to manage the indexing of the server on its own. It works very well. Server OSI've decided the best server OS for what I want is Windows Home Server, likely Windows Home Server V2, which will be based on Windows 7 and is due out later this year. This has the added bonus of being able to backup other machines on the network and having an interesting mirroring solution. The current version is available on NewEgg for about $100, which is fair for the features it provides. Router OSWindows Home Server, and in fact probably any version of Windows, is totally unacceptable for running a home router/firewall if you want any control or configurability at all. The free *nix OS's seem to be much better at this. You could probably just install Debian and install whatever you want. For something more user-friendly, though, m0n0wall seems to be better. It might be that Windows Server (not Home) would work as a firewall, but it would likely be very difficult to configure and in any case very expensive for the software. Unfortunately, since Samba currently doesn't implement the Windows Indexing Service you can't get all of the functionality of the Server OS specified above out of a free OS. The ConundrumI always hate to buy, power and maintain two devices when one should do. Certainly, a fairly good desktop/server should have enough power to m0n0wall and Windows Home Server fast enough to saturate the network. All it really needs is the convergence of the needed hardware. Lots of disks for the server, at least 2 NICs for the router. That's easy enough. However, the problem is hardware access. The only way to run two OSs is through virtualization. Windows Home Server should probably have direct access to the disks, and m0n0wall is any case can't run a hypervisor. This means Windows has to be the host and m0n0wall the guest.
Windows Home Server V2 will presumably handle network connections the same way as Windows 7. So, we need to get Windows to route all traffic through a Virtual Machine that it is hosting (since the file server should sit on the LAN side of the network). I actually have this working right now as I write this post.
Network SetupI don't actually have a suitable server now, but in total I have two laptops available on my network, which I usually connect to wirelessly. For this experiment, I treated the Wifi NIC on Laptop A as the internet uplink, and the ethernet port as the LAN port. My other laptop connected to the LAN port using it's own ethernet port, thus forming a small network.
Virtual Machine setupI use VirtualBox for the hypervisor. I downloaded the VMWare image from the m0n0wall website. I created a new VM in VirtualBox, with the OS set to FreeBSD, 256MB of RAM, and the disk set to the vmdk from the m0n0wall image.
The VM's network configuration is very important, I set it up as follows: - Adapter 1: Bridged to WiFi (Internet uplink)
- Adapter 2: Host-only networking
I started the VM, and using the the CLI I set the WAN port to em0 and the LAN port to em1. I set the LAN address to 10.2.0.1 and the DHCP range to 10.2.0.100-200. These could really be anything, I just had to make sure they didn't conflict with my existing LAN. After the VM was rebooted, I verified that I could access http://10.2.0.1/ through my browser on the host. I then verified that the VM could ping google.com using the ping tool under diagnostics.
So, the VM was now acting as a router (sort of) for the host, but it was still accessible through its uplink address, when only the router should be visible. If this was hooked up to a cable modem, the VM probably wouldn't be able to get an address from a the modem since the host would have already claimed it. To fix this, I went to the IPv4 properties on the WiFi (uplink) adapter and forced the address to 10.10.10.10, which of course wouldn't be routable by anything else on the network, you could probably also use an address in the auto-configuration range. This left Windows in a somewhat confused state, it showed the WiFi card had no internet access, but it still had access through the Host-only network. This continued to work, since the VM was running DHCP to get a valid address from the upstream connection.
Now, the host was routing all internet traffic through the VM. But, there was still no access for other LAN devices, which were supposed to have access through the ethernet NIC. This was the easiest problem to solve, I just went to "Change Adapter Settings" under "Network and Sharing Settings". I then selected the ethernet NIC and the Host-only adapter, right clicked on one of them and selected "Bridge Connections". Once the bridge was created, I could connect Laptop B to Laptop A's network port and had full access to the VM and to the internet (I turned off the WiFi on laptop B to make sure it was connecting via Ethernet).
Figuring out how to trick Windows into making this work took a bit, but now that it's done it seems like a pretty simple solution. A speed test shows that the VM isn't adding latency. Now I need to decide what hardware to build my server with. |
posted Jul 9, 2010 7:25 AM by Andrew Madigan
Yesterday, in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management a district court ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing legally conducted gay marriages, was unconstitutional. The decision will of course have to survive appeals, potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court. If it does hold up, it would mean that gay marriages would receive the same federal tax benefits as straight marriages (currently, two people of the same sex who are married cannot file jointly for federal taxes, even if they can for state taxes). The same would also apply to taxes on benefits, citizenship (making it easier for an American's spouse to gain citizenship), etc. This still leaves the rule that states may refuse to recognize marriages legally conducted in another state. However, 8 states recognize gay marriages performed anywhere. New York, Maryland and Rhode Island do not perform gay marriages but do recognize them. The strange thing about those three states is that all of them border jurisdictions that will perform marriages without a residency requirement, so someone that lives in say, Maryland, can get married in D.C. and have the marriage recognized in Maryland. By refusing to perform gay marriages, these states are simply missing out in the business of performing the weddings.
I'm not married, and not planning to get married any time soon, but I do feel that whether a state recognizes gay marriage says a lot about it. Not only is it legally ridiculous to recognize a pre-arranged marriage performed somewhere in the third world and yet refuse to recognize a gay marriage between consenting adults performed in Massachusetts, it's also simply wrong to legislate bigotry. I won't work or live in a state the doesn't recognize gay marriage, even though that leaves me in only 8/50 states. As was pointed out during the Prop 8 campaign in California, Silicon Valley and technology companies have to compete for talent with Massachusetts companies, and there's no shortage of gays in the technology industry. Hopefully, states that ban gay marriage will start to see economic effects from doing so. |
posted Jul 7, 2010 5:54 PM by Andrew Madigan
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updated Jul 7, 2010 7:13 PM
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I just finished installing a programmable thermostat in my apartment. I realized that my power bill last month was a bit high (around $100) and was likely to be high for the current month as well given the mid-to-high 90s weather we're having. I hate to get home to a hot apartment, so I had been leaving the A/C on all day. Obviously inefficient. I bought a $25 programmable thermostat at Home Depot. It took a while to figure out exactly where the wires were and what they did. First, I only removed the faceplate of the old thermostat, then I realized I had to remove the circuit board and switches underneath. After that, I found the real wires. While I was labeling the wires I realized the RC and RH (cooling power and heating power) were bridged, which meant that there was really only an 'R' wire. I eventually got everything labeled and connected (the wires pulled out of the terminals several times, and was able to program the thermostat once I found some AAA batteries. It's working now, though it isn't actually mounted to the wall yet.
I think every apartment should have a programmable thermostat. They're simple enough to program, and they make it much easier to save energy. Since my complex pays for the heat I should think it would be in their best interest to provide one. At $25, it can''t be that much more expensive than an ordinary thermostat and it easily pays for itself, even for the landlord. Of course, if the landlord doesn't pay for the heat, I suppose it doesn't matter to them, but I think that's a conflict of interest anyway. When a landlord doesn't pay for the heat, he (or she) has no incentive to maintain the heating system. I experienced that at my last apartment - the heat couldn't actually heat the apartment and cost over $200 per month. I finally ended up using electric sealed-oil radiators. |
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