Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Well, I've finally relented and installed Windows 8.1 on one machine in the house. Frankly, I'm not in a big hurry to do it on the other two PC's I use, including my main development machine. First of all, if you are planning on upgrading to Windows 8.1, be aware of a couple of things:  1) You cannot upgrade directly from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1. Microsoft has, in their infinite wisdom (at least for now) made that impossible. No, you have to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 first. Only then can you do ANOTHER upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1.  2) On my bedroom laptop, which is a very fast HP quad core with 8 gigs of RAM, the total time involved ran into the 3+ hour range. Not fun at all!  3) On Windows 8.1 you will get back your "Start" button and menu, but it won't be what you think you were told. In order to get something that looks like the classic Windows 7 Start Menu and features, you'll need to download something like Classic Shell ....

When our great nation was started, Americans had a high degree of trust in their government. They felt that it genuinely represented the interests of the people. Government policy in developed countries is relatively stable and predictable, and, for the most part (at least relative to less developed countries), promises made are promises kept. Governments keep their promises despite the fact that policymakers face a well-known time-consistency problem. That is, it is seldom in the short-run best interest of a government to keep capital taxes low, honor its debt obligations, or inflate the currency only by the expected amount. Much of the theory on credible government policy concerns itself precisely with accounting for this ability of governments to make and keep promises. In these good scenarios, households trust the government and the government does not betray this trust because a deviation by the government causes a reversion to a worse equilibrium. Depending on your point of vi...

The Wall Street Journal reported that "The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria, officials said, amid an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region." The date when our intelligence agencies intercepted the Iranian message on Iraq has not been publicly reported, but the Journal said that it was “intercepted in recent days.” So the timing fits: it seems probable that Obama became aware of the threats of retaliation that have been reported (and, perhaps, others that have not been made public) last week; most likely, late last week. Experts say that this is the reason why Obama suddenly changed his mind last Friday and decided to have Congress weigh in on the Syrian attack decision. It appears there was a possibility of major blowback, not just from an isolated terrorist or two but coordinated by Tehran itself. In the event of a significant ret...