Mitt Romney and his taxes

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-january-24-2012-elizabeth-warren

“Poor people have shitty lobbyists.”

I don’t usually watch too much of the Daily Show, but occasionally they have fantastic commentary pieces. Now, I really love this one. John Stewart does a good job here boiling it down to the fact that those with influence can easily bend the law to their own advantage. Once done, you can easily just explain everything by the fact that what you are doing is perfectly legal. Of course, there is never any more explanation than that. Or, the fact that you yourself are even the ones that pushes the law because you’re just pursuing your own interests.

Predictions for 2012

With the start of the new year, I’ve been thinking about what may be in store for us. To start, one which could be foreseen and long rumored, was the bankruptcy filing of Kodak. This already happened on January 19th. What does it mean? For starters, I suppose that you can now say that film based photography is officially dead. Secondly, the talk about the auction of a portion of their imaging patents wasn’t able to hold off the bankruptcy filing. The tech patent market seems to have become pretty quiet over the second half of the past year, and will probably continue to do so. Another company that looks to be headed into a dismal abyss this year is Research in Motion (RIM). RIM puts out the Blackberry phones. They’ve had a plummeting share in the US smartphone market to about 9%, down from 24% at the start of 2011. In addition to that, they have delayed the release of their new operating system QNX to late in the year. With how fast the mobile market is changing, that may be too late for them.

Moving on in the technology sector, Apple will release their rumored Apple TV, but my sense is that this will probably have a much harder time than the previous products that they have been releasing such as the iPhone and iPad. (Apple is sitting on a mountain of cash so they have the ability to keep it around till it gains sufficient traction.) The TV market is so established by now, that they would have to come up with something significantly revolutionary to make significant inroads. The tablet market was in such infancy, and in the smartphone market the iPhone was so far ahead of anything else that both had no significant competition. The tablet market will continue to be dominated by the iPad, but Android will make significant gains in the smartphone market. The big difference here being the carrier subsidies. Unless the android tablets came significantly undercut the iPad on price, they will had difficulty competing. For two tablets that cost about the same price, the choice will be the iPad over an Android competitor. The cloud will continue to grow in the services that it provides, and mobile networking and social media will continue to drive social and political turmoil around the world. Facebook will go public to the dismay (or delight depending on if you’re buying or selling) the Valley’s property market, but with a significantly small number of shares floated. I don’t see Mark Zuckerberg wanting to give up that much control.

In other news, the Nissan Leaf will usher in the era of the electric car in the same manner that the Toyota Prius created the market for the hybrid. However, the electric car will be limited to two car families with a usable garage limiting the usable market for it. Without a reliable place to plug the car in for the night, it’s just not that useful and the range prevents it from being used for anything other than daily commuting.

What about the Euro? Two things can happen. Either the countries get it together or it falls apart. The European governments will stumble through the year, but in the end it probably won’t make it through the year as it currently is. At least one country (Greece) get’s thrown out of the currency. This is the more likely scenario compared to a complete collapse of the common currency. At some point, an organized exit may be seen as the only politically viable solution as opposed to more political integration of the European countries.

In Russia the protests will turn more violent, but Vladimir Putin will return as President of Russia, but not without political unrest and charges of rigging the election by the world at large. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria will be toppled. More covert and possibly military action will take place against Iran’s nuclear program, but not an outright war. Barak Obama will narrowly win the election and serve a second term as President. The stock market will be either flat or down on the news. If he loses the election, the stock market will rise on the news hoping that a change in office will be a fresh start and the economic climate will brighten. Any change will be better than the current path that the economy is on.

What else? This site will get a new look this year. The camera will get dusted off and pulled out of the closet.

The Patriots will win the Super Bowl and have their revenge.

Kodak

It came across on the news today that the Eastman Kodak Company has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It’s been a long time coming, not just in the last couple of weeks/months, but rather for years.
The news was rather sad. I had worked there when I had first gotten out of school in the image science program, over 10 years ago now. I haven’t been back to Rochester since then. I wasn’t there too long, but it was still the best job that I have had. I got to spend most of my days writing image processing algorithms, reading papers, and learning from some of the best. I loved it. But, I couldn’t stand the winters and didn’t want to be in Rochester if I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to, so I left.
Already, by that time they were floating aimlessly as a company. They didn’t want to leave the silver halide business due to the amount of dollars that it was printing them. They had been talking about digital photography, but couldn’t seem to focus on it like they had to. Inkjet was going to save them, digital sensors was going to save them, a lot of things were going to save them, however they never really stood behind anything that could take them into the future. It’s unfortunate. They invented the digital camera, but it ultimately led to their downfall.
In a way, they were also arrogant. They thought that they knew imaging better than anyone (in many ways they were right) so people would always turn to them, but most people don’t care. Their pictures are good enough. They snap pictures on phones and upload and share them. If a photo isn’t good, it gets deleted and you try again. It’s not like film where you don’t have the luxury of seeing at the time how your pictures come out.

There is an interesting article relating Fuji Film and Kodak at The Economist here

Restarting into a new year

The new year has started, and I can’t say that I’m sad to see that the past year has moved into the past. I’m looking forward to the coming year. I’m feeling that this one is going to be a good one.

[Hacking Mac]: iPhoto SQL Events

See here for more information regarding iPhoto database

Photos are separated into events which typically get created when photos are imported into iPhoto. For scripting in Applescript, the photos can be imported to a specific album, but not to a specific event. Events also don’t have any hooks in Applescript to modify them.

Internally, in the iPhoto database the events are done as follows. There is a table name SqEvent with all of the event listed as rows. It looks like:

CREATE TABLE SqEvent (primaryKey INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, keyPhotoKey INT, name VARCHAR, comment VARCHAR, rollDate REAL, rollDirectories BLOB, rollID INT, currentPhotoKey INT, displayOrder INT, emptyRoll INT, uid VARCHAR, locationStreet VARCHAR, locationCity VARCHAR, locationCounty VARCHAR, locationState VARCHAR, locationPostalCode VARCHAR, locationCountry VARCHAR, locationLatitude REAL, locationLongitude REAL, locationRadius REAL, locationKey INT, manualLocation INT, ocean INT, country INT, province INT, county INT, city INT, neighborhood INT, aoi INT, poi INT, namedPlace INT, attributes BLOB);

The event has a code to identify it in the primaryKey. The individual images are tagged with an event using the SqEvent.primaryKey in the SqPhotoInfo.sqEvent column. You can get all photos with a certain event, or all of the events for photos using this relationship. For example, the following returns all images from an event named <name>
select * from SqPhotoInfo,SqEvent where SqPhotoInfo.event = SqEvent.primaryKey and SqEvent.name='<name>';
Mac Code Monkey also has good information here.

Ok, so, what do I want to do? What I would like to do is import images to a specific event. I can’t import to a specific event, but I can manipulate the table after the fact by altering the event key for an image from one event to another.
update SqPhotoInfo set event=2095 where primaryKey=3500;
In this case, it will update the event key to the primaryKey of the event that I want to move into (2095 in this case) for the photo identified by the primary key, in this case 3500.

After I import the images, they are in the last import album. It has an id of 999001. I can get the events of these photos with:
select event from AlbumsPhotosJoin,SqPhotoInfo where AlbumsPhotosJoin.sqAlbum=999001 and SqPhotoInfo.primaryKey=AlbumsPhotosJoin.sqPhotoInfo

Is the Gold Bubble Ready To Pop?

For the past few years, I’ve noticed an increasing interest in people buying gold. Advertisements on television, radio, endless banners proclaiming cash for gold around town as you drive around. The price of gold has soared in recent memory. But what about now? The tune has started to change. Now, the tide is slowly turning the other way. More and more, you see signs proclaiming that you should buy gold. Today on the radio, I even heard an advert for a gold backed IRA. The kicker was that they will give you an extra $150 for buying into the gold fund.
What does it mean? Well, instead of buying up your gold, investors/speculators are trying to offload it. What better way to do that then proclaim how it’s gone up so much in value. Originally, you heard about selling gold, now they’re looking for suckers to buy it while the price is still high.

Remember, gold is a commodity, just like everything else. It has value, but it has price fluctuations like everything else. It can be overvalued, it can be undervalued. You could possibly trade with it, but it still needs to be converted into money. While it can store value, but it’s not an investment. It cannot generate returns on it’s own.

You heard it here first, folks.
Gold is currently at USD $1830.79

Thoughts on Apple and Steve Jobs

The news came out after-hours last night that Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple effective immediately. This was the day that I think most shareholders have dreaded for quite some time. I don’t think that there will be any noticeable change in the near-term. Products are already being developed, and the company seems to have a roadmap in place for the next few years that, if history is any indication, will leave competitors struggling to keep up. Out past that, I think that it may be more uncertain. Steve Jobs has a great talent. He has been able to see into the future and create beautiful products that people want. The question of if that will continue is what will be answered but not for a few years. Fundamentally, Steve Jobs has taken the old computer retailer and created a new company that packages technology in a simple, elegant, easy and intuitive package for people to use. Basically, it trades on the power of ideas. Anyone can sell computers, but selling ideas is harder, and almost impossible to copy. A company can sell ideas forever, long after computers have become obsolete. Whether it can continue to innovate after the main wellspring has gone is the question.

Shares are down $7 (1.86%) at the opening of the market to $369

What a time to go on vacation

I’ve been gone the last two weeks, but it’s been a busy time in the world. We finally got a budget deal that averted the federal government’s default (yay), S&P downgraded the credit of the United States government (ugh), Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and Rick Perry entered the presidential race the same day, the Euro is currently under the stress of Italian and now French debt (ugh), the stock market is imploding (double ugh), Google is buying Motorola Mobility, HP is closing shop on WebOS and exiting the consumer market, there was rioting in London of all places, a more assertive crackdown in Syria of protesters, and upheaval in San Francisco over the decision by BART to shutdown wireless access in the underground stations with protests leading to stoppage of service during rush hour and sites being hacked by Anonymous (please don’t hack me).

There are lots of angry people in the world out there, perhaps justifiably.

US Debt Talks

It is now almost 10am eastern time on Friday July 29th. Yesterday, the planned House vote on a package to cut spending and to raising the federal government debt ceiling has been delayed. The US treasury has projected that it will be unable to pay all of the government obligations after August 2nd, which is now just a couple days away. The fact that the American government, our government, has been unable to come to any agreement on this is a saddening show of what we have come to. I would have thought, perhaps naively, that for something so serious, politics could have been put aside and the well being of the nation taken into account. For all of the talk about how a default would be unthinkable, and a travesty, and that the US could not default on our obligations, the fact that there has been no agreement yet speaks volumes about what has happened to our government. Washington has been engrossed, on both sides, by the idea that all politics is a zero-sum game. Both the Democrats and Republicans have become completely unable to come to any agreement lest it is seen as a victory for the other party. Perhaps, you can say that we only get the government that we deserve. Hopefully, that is not the case.

Drought still going on…