Maynard Handley

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• June 30, 1999, on Money, Money, Money:

  You are right about Oppenheimer being a bunch of sharks. Back in my youth about four years ago I decided it would be responsible to invest my money rather than having it simply stagnate in my checking account. I figured (being an idiot) the way to do this was to visit a securities firm and ask for advice. The guy I spoke to seemed decent enough, asked a bunch of questions, and recommended I invest in five different Oppenheimer mutual funds. I did so and let the whole thing aside. Then about a year ago I landed up reading a copy of Andrew Tobias' _The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need_. Fired up with enthusiasm, I looked at my Oppenheimer statements to learn that, in the greatest bull market in history, these people had made me maybe 4% return in 3 years. (And the reason for this sort of thing is as Phil says---kickbacks, huge "management fees", huge advertising budgets, a constant impulse to churn stocks simply to create the illusion of business etc). There are a few moral...

• June 30, 1999, on Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists:

  My comment on reading this (and similar material) scattered around Phil's site (and especially on reading the reader responses) is that perhaps the real problem here is that people don't know or are unwilling to admit what they want. Some people want to be able to buy a new trophy wife every ten years. Some people want a husband and two kids. Some people want to simply understand all the physics that is already known while other people want to dig really deep into some field of physics and make a contribution. However if you're unwilling to admit what you want, chances are happiness isn't going to just fall into your lap. The general impression I get from the comments is that the people who are bitter are the people who want money and its accoutrements, but pretended (and perhaps still pretend) to themselves that they wanted knowledge. If you truly are smart, and want knowledge, this is a glorious time in history to be living. If you're working in a high tech job and saving y...

• July 13, 1999, on Producing Streaming Video (and Audio) for the Web:

  (1) DV cameras do not record MPEG. They record their own format which is more like JPEG in that it is single frame based (no frame-frame dependencies). It differs from JPEG in that it has some alternative DCT stuff to handle interlace, and some weird packings of the bits both to smear the image out over the tape so small tapr dropouts lead to whole-image small quality loss rather than an obvious localized spot of garbage. (2) DV is still not perfect. There are arguments going on right now between different manufacturers about what the ranges of the YUV data encoded are supposed to be. Until the relevant parties get there act together it is quite possible that the DV you import from one camera will look nasty (under/over contrast) when played on another camera or through software. (3) One of the better ways of getting the video down to a decent size is to drop the frame down to 8fps (if originally 24fps source) or 10 fps (if originally 30fps). At 8-10fps the playback is smooth enou...