Gregory Lent

This puts a lot more pressure on FF users. You are actually a source of happiness in the world. I promise to do my best. - todd

Well. There you are then. - Glen Campbell

I am a happy chappy mostly - Ian May

"The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a property of groups of people." - todd

happiness is contagious, research finds .. a tweet from nicefishfilms today .. http://www.latimes.com/news/sc... - Gregory Lent

I wonder if there is a flip-side to this ... pissy, cranky, depressed, etc. will also ripple through the socnets - Nadine Schaeffer

That might not be a bad idea, actually. - Helen Sventitsky

Wow, I think that would be genius. Granted, it would probably be bad for Open Source software in government, but ya never know. - Jason Huebel

when it comes to open source and B.G., one can be certain about outcome - silpol

رونوشت به فرزاد :D - Maryam Ardakani

مرسی مریم ، عجب خبر شگفت انگیزی هم مجلل شده به عکس بیل گیتس کبیر :D - Farzad

Would be great idea :) Or should they ask Stallman? ;) - Jemm

No. Not at all. - Chris Baskind

Yes - Johnny Worthington

Do you mean when setting up a domain or when typing a URL in the address bar? I try to set it up so either will work because so many people still don't know that www.whatever.com doesn't necessarily go to whatever.com. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

friendfeed doesn't use it anymore - AJ Batac

Yes. - Glen Campbell

I know... It just doesn't look right to me :( - Johnny Worthington

Both. - Ian May

@ajbatac I try not to use WWW anymore. - Czar

All of my sites are no-www Class B: http://no-www.org/faq.php?q=cl... - donato

Nope, I redirect www to no-www. - Andrew Trinh

LOL, nice Andrew. :P I'm not there... yet. Wait, you mean you make www.domain.com redirect to domain.com... I must be tired. I originally read that as you redirect www. to no-www.org. Hahaha. :) - donato

Nay. - Mona N.

Where possible, I try to make www and non-www go to the same place. However, some of my domains have non-www subdomains. - Morton Fox

If you're targeting an innovator, early adopter or even early majority crowd, then non www might be best, but you'll want www for any site targeting late majority and laggards. Also, pick one and stick with it - consistency is the key IMO. - AJ Kohn

Yup - Andrew Smith

mohomed=genieyclo started on the net at three years of age - Gregory Lent

I generally support both. Seems like putting the work on me takes it off the clients, which is always a win. - matthew john ernisse

When possible, I try to redirect www to non-www. But for some reason Google App Engine doesn't support naked domains anymore, so I'm forced to redirect the naked domain to www. Lame. - Guillermo Esteves

I don't mean to be all 'GET OFF MY LAWN' but what happened to the good old days where you had to type in 'www'... www.here.com = 'where'.'who'.'type'... I'm gonna grab some pudding - Johnny Worthington

I don't - rampantheart

no i usually just type the address without the www - (jeff)isageek

now i have to research what the difference is .. - Gregory Lent

No, and I wish it would go away. I make sure my sites redirect to cut it out. I wonder how much time is wasted by so many people typing and saying those three useless letters. - Nathan Howell

not in most cases... most will do it anyway in browsers for you.. so just typing robsellen.com for example http:// gets added anyway, on some sites, I have had to put www. too. rare tho now. :o) - Rob Sellen

Gregory, www.whatever.com is just another subdomain like blog.whatever.com, so in theory it can point to a separate site than whatever.com - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)

I make www redirect to the site that doesn't have www at the beginning. You can do it in your apache config. - Jason Huebel

God, I must be insane, I have mine redirecting the other way - Johnny Worthington

Johnny, that's what yahoo, facebook and google do too ;) - AJ Batac

We're not using it at work that much these days. However, my users, God bless them, will almost invariably start typing "www.," if I tell them to go to worksite.whateverourdomainis.edu. - MiɳiMagɘ (AlwaysMiniMage)

Sometimes. One good reason to use www prefix is to prevent cookies set on main website domain (foo.com) from affecting subdomains (blog.foo.com or testing.foo.com). Been there, done that. - andrei_c

You should keep what ever Google has listed for your site. As Tina mentions, they are considered two different addresses. And who actually types the www? I just type sitename in address bar and hit cmd(or ctrl)+enter. - Andrew Smith

Andrew, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to tell them to index it with or without the www. - Guillermo Esteves

For one of them I do. - Mathew Ballard

I'll clarify. I recently reverted to using www. as a domain prefix because I can use a CNAME to reference a different host. With the raw domain name, I have to hard-code the IP address; if I have to move a domain to a different server, I just change the CNAME and don't have to keep track of all the IP addresses. I'm not sure if it's worth it however. One thing for sure, I *never* allow both the raw domain and the www.+ prefix; that's bad for SEO, for cookie-handling, and it doesn't work well with Wordpress. - Glen Campbell

So says a new study that followed a large group of people for 20 years — happiness is more contagious than previously thought. “Your happiness depends not just on your choices and actions, but also on the choices and actions of people you don’t even know who are one, two and three degrees removed from you,” said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and social scientist at Harvard Medical School and an author of the study, to be published Friday in BMJ, a British journal - Mitchell Tsai

A next-door neighbor’s joy increased one’s chance of being happy by 34 percent, but a neighbor down the block had no effect. A friend living half a mile away was good for a 42 percent bounce, but the effect was almost half that for a friend two miles away. A friend in a different community altogether can win an Oscar without making you feel better. “You have to see them and be in physical and temporal proximity,” Dr. Christakis said. - Mitchell Tsai

Still, they said, it is not clear if increased communication via e-mail messages and Webcams may eventually lessen the distance effect. In a separate study of 1,700 Facebook profiles, they found that people smiling in their photographs had more Facebook friends and that more of those friends were smiling. - Mitchell Tsai

sheesh, this happens all day every day .. walking down the street, in a taxi, my god, it is my main activity ... shooting out energy and blasts of smiles, dance moves, jokes, empathy ... all day, every day ... and it is a study!!??!! .. scientists are sooooooo weird - Gregory Lent

They try but keep failing. Orkut ring a bell? HAHA - Mona N.

Yes they are - Chris Saad

Orkut's big in Brazil! (Every time I read that - I think of indie bands saying "oh, we have a big single in Belgium...") - George Smith

Orkut is popular in some countries outside the US I think, Brazil and India for example. Big populations. - jjprojects

the world is a social network, google is info-ing the world, natural result - Gregory Lent

Are you comparing the size of Brazil to Belgium or just noting that Brazil is not the U.S. or the E.U.? - Robert Miller

The overall financial situation in the U.S. is changing, and that’s what we don’t know about. It’s going to be changed fundamentally in many ways. Think about the way we’ve been living the past 30 years. Thirty years ago, the leverage of the investment banks was like 4-to-1, 5-to-1. Today, it’s 30-to-1. This is not just a change of numbers. This is a change of fundamental thinking. People, especially Americans, started believing that they can live on other people’s money. And more and more so. First other people’s money in your own country. And then the savings rate comes down, and you start living on other people’s money from outside. At first it was the Japanese. Now the Chinese and the Middle Easterners. - Gregory Lent

First of all, you have this book to sell. [He picks up a leather-bound book.] This is worth something, because of all the labor and so on you put in it. But then someone says, “I don’t have to sell the book itself! I have a mirror, and I can sell the mirror image of the book!” Okay. That’s a stock certificate. And then someone else says, “I have another mirror—I can sell a mirror image of that mirror.” Derivatives. That’s fine too, for a while. Then you have 10,000 mirrors, and the image is almost perfect. People start to believe that these mirrors are almost the real thing. But at some point, the image is interrupted. And all the rest will go. - Gregory Lent

We have a PR department, which collects all the comments about us, from Chinese newspapers and the Web. Every night, I try to pick a time when I’m in a relatively good mood to read it, because most of the comments are very critical of us. Recently we increased our holdings in Blackstone a little bit. Now we’re increasing a little bit our holdings in Morgan Stanley, so as not to be diluted by the Japanese. People here hate it. They come out and say, “Why the hell are you trying to save those people? You are the representative of the poor people eating porridge, and you’re saving people eating shark fins!” It’s always that sort of thing. - Gregory Lent

Probably tell Hezbollah to start lobbing katusha rockets in to Israel 24 hours a day. - Peter Simard

Sigh. - Ladybug Heather

are they that foolish? - Gregory Lent

Peter - it seems likely that Iran would target Dimona and the Gulf of Hormuz, right? $10 a gallon gas or more would be one likely result. - Sean McBride

The sad thing (well, one of them) is: if they did, they'd probably have more legitimate pretext than we had when we invaded Iraq. - Chester

If any investor could have avoided the credit catastrophe, it should have been Harvard. Harvard, the ultimate long-term investor (it's been compounding assets for more than 350 years). - Mitchell Tsai

The Harvard Management Company http://hmc.harvard.edu has the enviable but challenging task of managing Harvard's mammoth endowment. As of June 30, 2008, HMC managed more than $45 billion, the vast majority of it endowment assets. (Here's HMC's annual reports http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/ann... and data on its impressive recent performance.) http://hmc.harvard.edu/investm... - Mitchell Tsai

The 13-F http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/... shows Harvard with some 231 positions worth nearly $2.9 billion, highly concentrated in popped macroeconomic bubble plays. The top 10 holdings, which Bloomberg helpfully breaks out, account for 70 percent of the value of the disclosed holdings. - Mitchell Tsai

As HMC's asset-allocations data http://hmc.harvard.edu/investm... show, the endowment allocated about 11 percent of its total to emerging market stocks. (By contrast, nearly half of the portfolio described in HMC's 13-F was in emerging market stocks.) - Mitchell Tsai

But it does show that even the best, most experienced, and highly regarded long-term investors can get suckered into new-era thinking and make investments that turn out to be highly risky bets. The 13-F shows that the managers running this Harvard portfolio were huge believers in the decoupling theory—i.e., that emerging markets would continue to thrive even as the United States stalled—and in the notion that commodities would keep booming. - Mitchell Tsai

See Harvard's allocation strategy for $45 billion (as of 6/30/08) http://friendfeed.com/e/c51c0a... - 33% US/World equilty, 13% Private equity (up 2%), 18% Absolute return, 8% Commodities, 9% Timber/Land, 9% Real Estate, 11% bonds (down 4%), -3% Cash - Mitchell Tsai

See Cap Gemini's World Wealth Report 2008 http://www.us.capgemini.com/wo... http://friendfeed.com/e/de0c18... From 2006 to 2008, HNWIs shifted to more cash & fixed income (up 13%) and less real estate & alternative investments (down 16%) - 33% Equities, 27% Fixed Income (up 6%), 18% Cash/Deposits (up 7%), 11% Real Estate (down 5%), 11% Alternative Investments (down 11%). - Mitchell Tsai

Nothing wrong with being aggressive if they can wait 20-30 years. They probably can't wait that long. - Morton Fox

Morton: Harvard withdraws a lot of money each year to help pay tuition, so big down swings are not good. In FY 2008, Harvard used $1.6 billion from the fund to pay a lot of the operating $3.5 billion operating budget. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/... http://www.boston.com/news/edu... - Mitchell Tsai

It costs $47,215 ($32,557 + room/board), to attend Harvard in 2008-09, a 3.5 percent increase from last year. -- When I started in 1982-83, Tuition was $7,931 http://kwharbaugh.blogspot.com.... I think room & board was $4,000-6,000. Total of $12,000-14,000. CPI-U rose 2.235X since 1982 (97.9 to 218.783). So tuition at Harvard has risen at 2X the pace of the CPI. http://thecrimson.com/article.... - Mitchell Tsai

Same problem at Vassar, where 30% of the operating budget comes from investment returns on the endowment: http://www.miscellanynews.com/... The result? They're looking into cutbacks everywhere. This, I heard from a friend who works there. - Morton Fox

It's hard to blame endowment fund managers though. Almost everything had big losses this year. - Morton Fox

Ouch! Although, endowments could adjust their rules and pay the planned amounts for the next 2-3 yrs. It wouldn't hurt the endowments too much to pay 6-7% instead of 4-5%. - Mitchell Tsai

[Update 12/4/08] Tuition vs Total cost is weird due to fees http://fao.fas.harvard.edu/cos... 2008-2009 $32,557 (+$3,616 medical/student fees = $35,173) + $6,060 room + $4,982 board = $47,215 (+ $3,215 estimated personal expenses + $0-2,400 travel) = $50,250-50,650 (+$1,404 health insurance, if not covered under parents plan). - Mitchell Tsai

If only there was an acclaimed business school that could have helped them out with this... - Mark VandenBerg

Total cost is pretty steep now. I think it was only $20K to $25K when I went to Columbia U 15 years ago. - Morton Fox

the guy is getting a promotion, along with larry summers - Gregory Lent

No. We're Jewish. :( - Akiva Moskovitz

The only Christmas Spirit I feel right now is Scrooge. - MLx

No. I never do until a few days before. I can't get excited about Christmas 3,4,5 weeks out. - Ian May

It's December? Oh crap... - xero

do you feel the holiday spirit akiva? - Trish Haley

Not at all! There are no Xmas lights in the streets where I live or anywhere. Plus I live in Fl and the heat and boats and oceans don't leave much to be desired this season. - Adriana

driven out of starbucks by christmas music, only to find it even louder in the mall next door .. and this is in shanghai .. i have disliked christmas all of my adult life . - Gregory Lent

Bah! Humbug! - April Buchheit

I'm with Gregory. Christmas music might be OK if it wasn't the same 10 songs played over and over in every single goddamned store! - Gabe

ha, the birth of a boycott christmas movement? - Gregory Lent

Gregory, I can only hope! - Gabe

I'm beginning to.. some people at work were decorating the office today. The next door neighbor put up their lights. - Rodfather

A little bit. I will feel it more when I get home for Winter break, hopefully. - Alisha

I dated a girl named Christmas once, and I used to love to get into the Christmas spirit... - Mark VandenBerg

Hahaha Mark - Rodfather

I dated a guy whose last name was Christmas. I still have a little stuffed panda with "Christmas is love" written on its belly. - MiɳiMagɘ (AlwaysMiniMage)

I think so, but it may have been the eggnog milkshake from Mickey D's. - Steven Perez

Another neoliberal hawk joins the Obama administration, no doubt to the applause and pleasure of neoconservatives. - Sean McBride

say obama has a long view, four years at least, and say that he wants to get his guys in there. and he knows there is a ton of shit to clean up before he can get his agenda underway .. how smart might he be, get the old paradigm guys in there, let them fail, then appoint new ones, having marginalized all of the oppostion within his party .. could he be that smart? - Gregory Lent

The thing is, if the old paradigm guys fail under his watch, he takes the hit. There is a much better explanation for what is going on: AIPAC is in control of the Democratic Party and of Barack Obama, and is selecting his appointments for him. He is doing what he is told, rather than exercising real leadership. There is a huge pile of data out there, all available via Google, to support this interpretation. - Sean McBride

yes, i was reaching for a straw, wanted your opinion - Gregory Lent

"AIPAC is in control of the Democratic Party...." Once again, Sean, you blame Jews for all the problems in the world. Which is exactly what the radical Muslims say. What makes you different? Is the Google data without bias? Show us the links, since you know where they are. - Al Pasternak

Al - most Jews have nothing to do with AIPAC, and no one said that AIPAC is responsible for all the problems in the world. So how did you leap to the weird conclusion that saying that AIPAC is in control of the Democratic Party is equivalent to blaming Jews for all the problems in the world? You want links? Simply Google {aipac democratic party} -- you'll be buried by links. Then Google AIPAC and specific Democratic leaders for all the gory details, for instance: Google {aipac howard dean}. - Sean McBride

Al - a pop quiz: name someone in recent years has served as both the president of AIPAC and chairman of the DNC (Democratic National Committee). - Sean McBride

Yes, I want a link that you've found and read. Simple - Al Pasternak

Al - Google AIPAC in coordination with the following topics: Ann Lewis, Barack Obama, David Axelrod, Dennis Ross, Haim Saban, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, Joseph Lieberman, Mark Penn, Martin Indyk, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer, Steve Grossman. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. - Sean McBride

Al - answer my pop quiz, and then I'll give you a link out of the tens of thousands of relevant links. I want to see if you actually know anything about this subject. - Sean McBride

Steve Grossman - but he did not hold both at the same time. So what? - Al Pasternak

So what? The head of the most powerful foreign lobby in America also served as head of the DNC? Can you name the head of any other foreign lobby who has also served as the head of the DNC? - Sean McBride

The link? - Al Pasternak

AIPAC doesn't support the majority view IN Israel or any other country, so which "foreign" position to they support? - Prolific Programmer

Prolific: AIPAC -- the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- generally promotes whatever views are dominant in the Israeli government at any given time. Lately AIPAC has been heavily agitating for American action against Iran on behalf of Israel. AIPAC is the lead organization in the Israel lobby. For whom do you think AIPAC is lobbying if not for Israel? - Sean McBride

Al - you didn't respond. Which head of a foreign lobby other than the Israel lobby has ever also served as the head of the DNC or RNC? Why do you think this is not a significant fact concerning the degree of influence that AIPAC exerts over the Democratic Party? - Sean McBride

"answer my pop quiz, and then I'll give you a link out of the tens of thousands of relevant links" Did that. The link is.... - Al Pasternak

Al - here is a link for you: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008... The president of AIPAC, David Steiner, was caught on tape bragging about his influence over Bill Clinton in selecting a secretary of state. - Sean McBride

Al - did you bother Googling any of the topics I recommended to you? Are you sincerely going to research this topic or not? - Sean McBride

Your mind is made up. I won't confuse you with the facts. Have a good Thursday - Al Pasternak

My mind is never made up, Al. I am always open to new facts and analyses that challenge my current beliefs. Challenge me. Respond to the link I gave you about David Steiner. Did Steiner, the president of AIPAC at the time, brag about his influence on Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party and the State Department or not? Let's discuss this. - Sean McBride

Al can pick this up later if he'd like. In the meantime, here is Robert Dreyfuss on the influence of AIPAC on the Obama administration: "Last spring, Tony Lake and Susan Rice, for example, took part in a WINEP "2008 Presidential Task Force" study which resulted in a report entitled, "Strengthening the Partnership: How to Deepen U.S.-Israel Cooperation on the Iranian Nuclear Challenge." The Institute, part of the Washington-based Israel lobby, was founded in coordination with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and has been vigorously supporting a confrontation with Iran. The task force report, issued in June, was overseen by four WINEP heavyweights: Robert Satloff, WINEP's executive director, Patrick Clawson, its chief Iran analyst, David Makovsky, a senior fellow, and Dennis Ross, an adviser to Obama who is also a WINEP fellow." - Sean McBride

Cite for the above Robert Dreyfuss article: "Still Preparing to Attack Iran: The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... The agitation for this policy tracks right back to AIPAC and the Israeli government. (Don't bother trying to accuse Dreyfuss of being antisemitic -- he's Jewish.) - Sean McBride

i think there is something behind aipac, tied into money .. no links, just a feeling - Gregory Lent

AIPAC is intimately entwined with some of the wealthiest people on the planet -- can one go higher up on the financial food chain? Probably not. Quite a few Forbes billionaires are leading members of this particular lobby. - Sean McBride

and, hmm, the, er, the fed? - Gregory Lent

Well, who controls the Fed? What does their social and political network look like? - Sean McBride

I'm a JEW and I'm unemployed... without connections! AIPAC is not in lockstep with Israel... the situation for example with Turkey and Armenia proves that. I feel like a black man that can't play basketball or play a musical instrument. for shame to be the NWO and not have a pot to piss in. McBride you nut. give it up. I can't even control Igor The Troll let alone Obama - Ⓝ〄ⒶⒽ ⒹⒶⓋⒾⒹ ⓈⒾⓂ〄Ⓝ

"...i feel lika a black man that can't play basketball or play a musical instrument..." .LOLz. how does that feel, exactly? - .LAG

The "split" is a healthy thing. Just like in Algiers: in the end - only a small minority of the French people kept viewing Algiers as "Southern France" - and without public backing, they've collapsed. The "split" has already happened when settlers started attacking Israeli peace activists and even soldiers. They're no longer "Eastern Israelis". The real problem is that it's *government* policy to allow/fund settlement expansions in violation of agreements same regimes (even "leftist" ones) keep signing. - ĎÚβĨŐÚŚ Dod

The Israeli government, under both right and left regimes, has fully supported the settlements movement, which is driven by the most extreme religious ideologues in Israel. One might reasonably conclude, therefore, that the Israeli government really hasn't the slightest intention of working out a peace agreement, and has only been pretending to do so, using peace negotiations as a stalling and delaying tactic with the hope that new larger Mideast wars will finally derail the Mideast peace process forever. Meanwhile, the United States is being passively dragged along by this crazy train towards Armageddon, with nary a peep from most politicians. AIPAC has already loaded up Obama's White House with assets who will keep Obama in line. Rahm Emanuel will be his chief minder. - Sean McBride

"One might reasonably conclude, therefore, that the Israeli government really hasn't the slightest intention of working out a peace agreement..." As soon as the so-called 'right-of-return' ofPalestinian refugees is off the table, then all things are possible. As soon as the Khartoum Resolutions are repudiated http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20t... then all things are possible. Your bias, Sean, is that you refuse to acknowledge the Arab/Palestinian/Muslim role in perpetuating the conflict. Sad. - Al Pasternak

Al - that's not a fair statement. I've said several times that I don't believe that either side to this conflict is interested in compromising. They've made that clear by their words and deeds. I am predicting that this situation will end as a catastrophe, unless there is a major change in attitude on both sides. Why did Labor continue to build settlements when it knew that they would make it nearly impossible to reach a peace agreement? Labor said one thing, and did another. - Sean McBride

What's the best solution to this mess? Good old Americanism -- stop organizing states around ethnic and religious groups. That's the modern way. But few people living in the Mideast are interested in trans-tribal living arrangements, apparently. - Sean McBride

Al, it is not about "If .... gone/off the table then..." Don't forget that the major reason Israel was recognized in 1948 by the then new UN was to have this right of return for Palestinians. It would be a demographic catastrohpy if they let it happen now, i admit. IMO there is no "more" or "less" innocent sides. They have the roadmap and have to sit and try to have a two state solution. - Hayk

i think a single state for all is better ... - Gregory Lent

That's the current trend -- forget two states. One state based on democratic equality for all, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Minorities in this new state should enjoy the same rights as minorities in the United States and other Western democratic nations. -