hillary in pictures (in the uk media) January 9, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedThe British media seem to have gotten very hung up on publishing horrific pictures of Hillary Clinton. Although there are some odd pictures of other candidates, such as this one of John McCain there seems to me to be a higher proportion of odd ones of Hillary Clinton. It’s worth comparing the gruesome Guardian‘s Clinton gallery from Iowa with the much friendlier McCain gallery. The pictures they have of John Edwards are mostly pretty cute. On the other hand, some of the others, such as Barack Obama don’t even seem to have any recent picture galleries up on the site, and if I were Mitt Romney, I would be a bit unhappy with my picture gallery. The first picture shows him wearing a red wreath halo, the third just shows his pants (pretty crumpled), and his face just makes it onto the edge of the fourth one, although the rest aren’t bad.
Here is a Hillary picture from tomorrow’s Guardian:
The BBC has this one:
And here is one from the Telegraph:
real world financial institutions cheat too January 8, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedVirtual world financial institutions may generally be nothing more than ponzi schemes, but real world financial institutions cheat too. Take the story from today’s NY Times about Countrywide Financial Corporation, which seems to have tried to recoup escrow monies from a mortgage customer using “recreated” letters – letters that seem to have been dated years before they were in fact written. In one case a letter was addressed to the customer’s lawyer at an address he did not move to until after the purported date of the letter. Countrywide’s lawyer seems to have conceded that the letters contained no disclaimers recognising that they had never actually been sent.
No one can do what Countrywide Can.SM
Update Jan. 11, 2008: Calculated Risk suggests that it probably did not occur to the person who produced the letters that they “would be construed by any normal person as an implied claim that they had in fact been sent years ago.”
second life banking announcement January 8, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedLinden announced today:
As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. We’re implementing this policy after reviewing Resident complaints, banking activities, and the law, and we’re doing it to protect our Residents and the integrity of our economy.
Some of the language in the announcement suggests that the policy has a broader application than activities which are described as banks. For example, the new policy applies to the “offering of … a rate of return on L$ invested” and Linden says:
We will not apply this policy to companies who submit a registration statement, charter, or other applicable license from a governing regulatory authority, or who are merely conducting marketing or education, but not accepting payments.
The change in policy seems to arise out of the collapse of Ginko Financial this summer and claims to be about banking law, but it also seems to relate to securities law. I argued in a recent paper that real world securities laws apply to offerings of “securities” in virtual worlds. I would have preferred a solution that would have allowed virtual world securities activity (i.e. exempted it from real world securities regulation) subject to conditions. Linden’s FAQ on this issue suggests that stock exchanges may or may not be subject to the policy (and see Robert Bloomfield’s comments at Terranova). Comments posted to the Linden announcement include those which approve of the new policy (some say it came a bit late) and those which regret the intrusion of real world law into the virtual worldspace.
I saw this story first via Virtually Blind.
happy 2008 January 1, 2008
Posted by Bradley in : Uncategorized , comments closedThe state of the world economy, and the outcome of the US Presidential election, are uncertain, but the Olympics will be held in Beijing this year. Slovenia (a member state of the EU since 2004) holds the Presidency of the EU’s Council for the first half of 2008, and 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Malta and Cyprus have adopted the euro, which is at its lowest rate against the dollar since the euro was introduced in 1999.