My Back Pages

Windows 8 is not so bad

On my year old HP Windows 8 laptop, I was able to successfully add a custom HTML widget to My Back Pages. Perhaps McAfee SaaS is getting in the way on my XP desktop.

I am trying to add a module to the sidebar, but cannot

I wondered if I could still post to My Back Pages, but I can. I tried to add an Amazon add to a Customer HTML module and Typepad hung.

Things President Obama has done right

I definitely am in favor of sending Special Forces teams to Afghanistan with "kill lists". That and the willingness to use drones against radical Islamists whereever they might be things that our President is doing of which I approve. I also approved of "taking out" Gadhafi and the automobile manfacturer bailout (I am embarrassed to admit). The didn't like how the auto bailout was executed, but I was in favor of the concept.

No one else seems as concerned as I am with the "Occupy" movement

The "Occupy" movement seems to be a astroturfing effort at its core, although there are many sympathetic leftist troops to participate. I read what is essentially a manifesto for the movement on Business Insider. My take is that they believe that Obama and the Democrats will lose in a 2012 election, so they want to replace our present form of government by next summer. They would cancel the usual 2012 election and setup a new socialist paradise in its place.

People in our govnernment want to have a Chinese-style control over the internet

I have to agree with Eric Schmidt on the subject of American government controls over the internet. The bad part is that the Republicans in Congress are as bad or worse than the Democrats on this subject. I have the impression that Government is filled with people who like to push people around and who would like a Chinese Government-like control over our lives and ability to use the internet. What is particulary repugnant is that the reason that they want the control is to protect the recording industry and the movie industry. If you hated the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, just wait for the next round. If you liked Government censorship of the internet in China, Africa, and Muslim countries, hang on, we can get it here. When Senator Ron Wyden opposes something, you know it has to be bad.

A connection between the price of silver and the Bin Laden story?

Yesterday afternoon, the price of silver plunged 9% and no one knew why. Later, we find out that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Was there a connection?

A theory

I theorize that the military aircraft procurement process was broken in the 1960's and has only gotten worse. The basic problem is over-specification and the need for one aircraft to do everything, due to the cost of development. Of course, the high cost of development is at least partly due to the specifications that are produced. The first aircraft from the new, broken process was the F-111, which was a costly failure. The last aircraft types built under the old process were the Vought F-8U and the McDonnell F-4D. The air force was already having trouble developing fighters by this time, so the fix was to adopt the F-4 Phantom for use there, as well as the navy. The current JSF F-35 is another example of the new process running amock. It is the one aircraft being built and has to succeed, as there is no alternative. The old process would allow for competing designs, possibly even proposed by aircraft manufacturing companies and the process would be allowed to progress quite far, even to the point of building competing aircraft that would actually enter service. Right now, we can't cancel the F-35 in favor of another aircraft, as there is no other. The old process had its roots from the beginnings of military aircraft development while the new process came from the flawed Robert McNamara mindset (he being the guy who built bad and ugly cars while he was at Ford).

One recent revelation was a surprise

I have been working on programs to play lotteries since last July, when I started prototyping. In the last day, I have been testing performance with a range of numbers for playing Cash Five (Texas). I had always assumed that generating combinations from a greater number of numbers was superior to a smaller number. I proved to  myself today that is incorrect. Playing as few as 11 hot numbers was better than playing 33 hot numbers. This is using a "full wheel" with random selection of combinations to play. One of my tweaks was to randomly select small blocks of combinations, and that often is better than a file of single random selections.

My new approach

Besides using "hot numbers", I now use a "full wheel", and gather statistics about what lines from the wheel to play. One thing that I discovered over the last nine months is that some combinations from wheels will win more often than others. So, the natural thing to do is to play those lines and ignore the ones that never win or that don't win very often.

My latest "technology"

I have seen how well my "Pick 3" program has done over the last few weeks. I use a combination of "hot numbers" and "positional analysis" to generate picks for the day and night games. I have been unhappy with my existing approach for playing games, particularly "Cash 5". I redesigned the "Cash 5" program to use "hot numbers" and got immediate results. I have spent the last four days refining that program. Yesterday, I adapted that program to play "Lotto Texas". "Lotto Texas" is a much different game, because of the erratic winning numbers, the six numbers per combination, and the 54 numbers played. One result of that is that on many days, my program will win nothing (I run against the history for testing purposes). However, my program is good enough to do well often enough to be profitable (it looks like). I am now playing "Pick 3" day and night, "Cash Five", and "Lotto Texas" (twice a week).