Monday Morning Quarterback vs. AIG

Setting the Conditions For Failure

First, a flashback. Prior to last September, AIG was in the very profitable business of selling insurance to banks and other entities. These policies were a bet against the chance that the mortgages the banks were holding (or securities comprised of them) became insolvent. In that heyday AIG was raking in dough (in the form of premiums) and brought on a bunch of fancy-pants executives, who would not work for AIG without the promise of big salaries and big bonuses. AIG signed contracts with these executives committing millions of dollars as an incentive for the executive joining the company. "If person X works at AIG during the previous year, he/she will receive $Z million as a bonus for that year."

We'll put that aside for now. Concerning the topic of insurance, AIG was an enabler. When a banker looked at a securitized collection of mortgages, he/she thought "Wow, these could be profitable but they're quite risky. How could I take advantage of this profit opportunity without all that risk?" Enter AIG: the insurance they sold was cheap enough that the banker's risk was greatly reduced at the small cost of an insurance premium. In the banker's mind, AIG is a huge multinational corporation, so the odds that:

1. The mortgages go bad, and
2. AIG can't provide coverage in the case of failure

...are theoretically very low. Unfortunately AIG was making the same assumption about mortgages and was taking a huge risk of its own, rather than building up capital in safe investments. It bet all those premiums, along with its wedding ring, chopper, and yacht that the dealer would bust.

Experiencing Failure

When the dealer showed 21, the banker, sitting at the same table, reluctantly gave up his chips and turned to AIG, expecting most of those chips to come back. Alas, AIG was penniless. Thus, last September it was suddenly realized that AIG owed gobs of money because tons of mortgages were going sour. Why did these bankers expect money from AIG? That's easy: they had a contract. The contract stated, very roughly, "Banker X will give $Y as a premium. If the attached mortgage goes insolvent, AIG will give $Z to Banker X."

Overreaction and the Sanctity of Contracts

Fast forward to March 2009. AIG has received $170 billion from taxpayers because it owes at least that much, mostly to banks. Unfortuately for US taxpayers, the contracts it has with those banks are just as legally binding as the contracts it signed with its executives concerning their bonuses. As the government shoveled into the company, AIG simply funneled it to its debtors. It gave billions[1] to Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, etc. etc. It then gave $165 million in bonuses to those executives who were owed money. Cue mass hysteria among the public, and even outrage from President Obama. There's some merit for the anger: how can a company that the US Government rescued from certain death turn around and dole out a chunk of it to people who were probably already richer than most Americans?

After much gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, the US House decided that the best way to solve this "problem" was a 90% tax on bonuses for those earning over $250,000. This is incredibly dangerous. Much like the recent insanity surrounding the Terri Schiavo case, Congress decided to put the important issues on hold in order to intervene in a very specific situation, one that is arguably not theirs to solve.

What is at stake here is the sanctity of contracts. Strictly speaking there are no contracts being violated in this case, but this is essentially the same thing. The US House can't break the bonus contracts, so they decided to steal the money back instead. The message this sends to all of corporate America is: commitments mean nothing. The House's actions are simply like those of a child, pitching a tantrum on the floor because they weren't doing anything about bonuses back when the contracts were signed. AIG's name has been destroyed as a result.

Fortunately, my frustration is waning as Obama and the US Senate seem to have little interest in this silly bonus tax, and several of the bonus recipients have returned at least $50 million total. Slowly the focus is shifting back where it belongs: the birthplace of executive compensation. If these bonuses defied logic (and it seems like they did), then why were they set up in the first place? We're already the current mess, but we can prevent future problems by encouraging companies to keep their bonus policies sane.

Inverse Telecine for 24p Video

"24p" files that originate from recent Canon AVCHD camcorders (such as the HF10 and HF100) tend to have a 3:2 pulldown (or 2:3 pulldown) applied to them, which means the file you get from the camera is actually 60i. Fortunately the original 24p data is available in these files, but extracting that data seems to cause lots of problems for new users of these cameras. The best approach depends on the tools you have at your disposal, but as someone with a limited budget, free software is my method of choice. Note: These steps rely on Windows-based technologies and software, so I can't speak for other operating systems.

I prefer using AVISynth and the TIVTC plugin. AVISynth is a powerful scripting language for video editors, but if you've never used it before, I must warn you that this method isn't for the faint of heart. AVISynth is the "command line" of the video world. Still, it's a great tool to learn. TIVTC gives us the filters required for pulldown removal.

The first step is making sure that your computer has the DirectShow filters necessary to play .MTS files natively. That is a topic outside the scope of this document, but if you need help, tools like ffdshow, Haali Matroska Splitter, and Media Player Classic should be helpful. These tools provide AVCHD decoding, M2TS demuxing, and playback, respectively. VLC is not an option here because it uses its own codecs rather than the Windows DirectShow filter architecture that AVISynth relies on.

First, confirm that you can open the file and play it as-is. Create a file named "inversetelecine.avs" in Notepad and put it in the folder with the downloaded MTS files from the camera. Here is the script's contents:

# Open the source file (change the filename as necessary)
DirectShowSource("00001.MTS")

In Explorer, open your new .AVS file in Media Player Classic and make sure the video works properly. If you get errors, tinker with the codec settings until things are working. This is often the hardest part of editing a relatively new format like AVCHD.

Next, make sure the TIVTC plugin is installed in AVISynth's "plugins" directory, then complete the script as below. This full script takes in a .MTS file from the camera and outputs uncompressed 24p video (23.976 fps) for use in a video editor or other compression program. You can "play" the script in any video editor that supports AVS files, such as VirtualDub, to produce a recompressed 24p file.

# Open the source file (change the filename as necessary)
DirectShowSource("00001.MTS")

# Pull out interlaced frames (the parameter means "find interlaced frames but don't blend any of the other frames")
TFM(PP = 1)

# Remove duplicate frames (the parameters mean "throw out 1 of every 5 frames")
TDecimate(CycleR = 1, cycle = 5)


Fixing the Remote Desktop Clipboard

Most remote desktop power users have noticed that sometimes the clipboard sharing feature stops working. There's an easy workaround:

1. On the remote machine, run Task Manager
2. Kill the "rdpclip.exe" process
3. Restart the process by going to Start, Run and typing "rdpclip"

Good as new! I'm not sure why the clipboard sync issues occur in the first place, and they can often return, occasionally forcing you to repeat this process.

The Art and Science of Minesweeper

I've been playing a lot of Minesweeper lately, particularly Minesweeper Clone, which records games and keeps detailed stats. As I play, my mind has wandered and I've been imagining arrangements of mines to answer certain questions, such as:

For any given number 1 to 8, is it possible to fill the minefield so that every cell is either a mine or that number?

As it turns out, the answer is yes. I created screenshots in Photoshop showing each layout. Each layout was designed to have as few mines as possible while still having every cell occupied by either a mine or a number. Roll your mouse over each number to view that layout. Note that the borders are infinite; that is, the pattern continues past the edges of the visible 16x16 field.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The layout for "7" was definitely the trickiest, and it ended up being the most complicated. Feel free to comment if you come up with a more efficient layout for one of the numbers.

iPhone Password Hash Generator

If you'd like a simple password hash creator for the iPhone that doesn't require running a program locally, look no further! Enter the desired password and salt below and the script will spit out the matching hash, which you can then use in /etc/master.passwd for any user. Any two characters will work for the salt, though it's most predictable if you limit yourself to an alphanumeric salt. You can always leave the default in place.

You can download the original master.passwd if yours gets confused.

Password: Salt: