I was inspired by the WSJ's Wealth Report column and comments to write down some thought I have had for a while about the economics of elite higher education. Namely, the reasons why elite higher education is a weird market. Here are a few thoughts on the ways this is true:

First, because so much of the cost of one’s education is subsidized by the school’s endowment, it is hard to have confidence that the students are really are getting a value up to the level of the real cost of their education.

Second, it has been a economic puzzle why universities should have endowments at all. Other businesses with similar characteristics do not.

Third, what is the goal the universities intend to accomplish? In practice the goal seems to be to attract the best students and give them the best education possible. This explains the lavish financial aid packages to compete for desirable students and the exorbitant amounts they spend to educate them. I can’t help but think that the world would be better off if $1 billion of the Harvard endowment were spent on various other private initiatives for at-risk kids.

Fourth, given my third point, why do private donors continue to make donations to elite private colleges and universities with large endowments?

Fifth, such institutions are also being run to satisfy another constituency: faculty and administration, for whom a substantial part of their compensation is non-monetary (e.g., nice surroundings, smart, diverse students and large research grants). This isn’t necessarily a problem, just another anomaly.

Sixth, there is no concerted systematic effort to measure the value being provided either to the students or to society by these institutions.

As an Dartmouth alum who is asked to give money, these are some of the factors that make that decision a hard one. The dominant though is: wouldn't another charity make better (in terms of being helpful to the world) use of my money?

My first foray into political predictions is at least half-wrong now that Guiliani has dropped out of the presidential race.

Best to double down. Here goes my current prediction:

• John McCain wins the Republican nomination (with prior leads in Super Tuesday states bolstered by his Florida win).
• Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination (with Obama momentum insufficient to overcome her establishment and interest group support).
• So many people hate Hillary, that McCain becomes the next president despite what should be a good year for Democrats.
• Talk of a need for a radically new Republican message recedes as people realize that Republicans may control the White House for all but 12 of the 48 years between 1968 and 2016.
• McCain faces a Democratic Congress and the political dynamic in Washington looks a lot like it did in 1989 when a moderate Republican president faced a Democratic Congress.
• President McCain stays the same as he has been for the past decade, conservative and parsimonious by default, but the lack of a principled commitment to classical liberal values (and insights on the limits of state power) makes him give into the temptation to exercise the levers of power to do some "good" on issues that capture his imagination from time to time.

This is no dream scenario for me as would prefer that Washington were dominated by market liberal politicians bent on dismantling large portions of the government. On the other hand, 1989 wasn't such a bad year in retrospect.

My main PC has Logitech Z-560 4.1 speakers attached to it. These speakers were highly regarded when purchased (about four or five years ago) and continue to be well regarded years later (see these Amazon reviews).

Unfortunately the separate volume control unit has been a source of problems. About a year ago, moving the volume control would result in a loud static burst (making me use the PCs volume control instead of the speakers' whenever I could). More recently the speakers have developed a tendency to emit a low crackle from time to time until the volume control is moved.

A Mahalo search revealed that I am not alone. Several posts stated that Logitech does not sell a replacement control pod, but some suggested putting contact cleaner on the volume control potentiometer.

So I ordered some contact cleaner and will give that a try.

I use J River Media Center to download podcasts and then sync them to the micro SD card that resides in my HTC Mogul phone. The podcasts are downloaded continuously by J River Media Server running on my Small Business Server 2003 box. A Media Center smartlist has been set up to contain the last three weeks of audio podcasts at any given time. These can then be synced to my phone's SD card, just by putting the card into any of the five PCs around our house.

This evening, I wrote up a Wiki entry describing some tips for this.

As my post yesterday alluded at the end, the Zune software running on a PC won't share most podcasts with the Xbox 360. After some experimentation, I have discovered that this seems to be true whether or not the genre of the audio or video podcast download is "Podcast" or something else. This behavior is exhibited even when the Zune store (the library) is deleted and rebuilt. Somehow the Zune application is relying on other indicia to identify files as "podcasts" and therefore not a Music or Video file that can be shared with the Xbox 360.

The one positive is that this does not seem to be true for MPEG4 video files so the Zune software can be used to share those files (which the Xbox 360 acting as a Media Center Extender won't play) for playback on the Xbox 360 using the dashboard.

I have written before about my irritation that the Fall 2007 update to the Xbox 360 did nothing to allow it to play Quicktime or MPEG4 videos when used as a Media Center Extender-- despite this functionality having been added for video played from the Xbox 360 dashboard.

I had used Orb for this previously, but this solution wasn't as reliable or robust (especially in trying to fast forward to a spot) as I might prefer.

I also commented that it was nice that Dlink's new Extender allows one to play media outside of the extender session which would be useful for playing media types like MPEG4 videos that can't be played on a Media Center Extender.

This led me to think about whether I could use another solution to watch MPEG4 videos from the Xbox 360 dashboard (as a stopgap until that functionality is added to Extenders).

First I tried to get Windows Media Connect (as implemented by Windows Media Player 11) to work (which had previously only shared local files). I discovered that I could accomplish this, but only by means of the following registry hack to allow Windows Media Player 11 to share files on a network share:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. In the registry tree (on the left), expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Microsoft, MediaPlayer, and then Preferences.
3. Right-click HME, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
4. Type EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click EnableRemoteContentSharing, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data text box, type 1, and then click OK. If you later decide to disable remote content sharing, you can repeat this procedure and change the value to 0

Having done so, however, I discovered that Windows Media Connect can't be used to share MPEG4 files.

Back to the drawing board.

A Google search turned up information that Zune PC software should actually allow sharing of MPEG4 files. Unfortunately my initial attempts to install the Zune software on my Media Center PC were unsuccessful. Finally, I discovered the trick to such an installation: To obtain a version of Zune software that actually installs follow these steps:

1. Click the following link to download the update package:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=104738

2. In the dialog box that appears, click Run to start the installation process.

3. When you are prompted, type the name of the folder where the files will be extracted.

4. When the files are copied to the folder, open the folder, and then double-click Startzune.exe to install the Zune software.

I then followed instructions to set up the Zune software for sharing with the Xbox 360 by doing the following after installation:

1. After setup, in the Zune software, click Settings, Sharing.
2. Click Enable Media Sharing with Xbox 360.
3. Set your media sharing options, then click OK.
4. On your Xbox 360 console, in the Media area of the Xbox Dashboard, select Music, Pictures, or Video.
5. If your PC's content is not displayed, press X and select your PC.

Finally success!

But not with respect to my audio podcasts. Why? Because the Zune software identifies audio files with the Genre "Podcast" as a "Podcast" category distinct from "Audio" or "Video" which it does not share with the Xbox 360!

Before picking up our new Canon Digital Rebel XTi I had previously expressed an interest in the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 as a replacement for our 5-year old camcorder.

Having now seen (and more important) and felt how it feels (good), I suspect I will purchase one. It feels good and can be pocketed (with the right pocket). Unlike other similar SD camcorders I saw at the show.

I also saw the Xacti E1, which is SD, but can be used underwater (kind of cool albeit not that crucial a capability). This looked good as well. But I was skeptical of the smaller lens and of whether an SD camcorder would really seem acceptable in a few years. Indeed my quality skepticism seems to be confirmed by at least by CNET's review.

There are more manufacturers of USB turntables for LPs, for example audio technica. They join Ion, who has made these products for a few years and this year has a number of models-- some seemingly of higher quality than in the past.

It is surprising, however, that without exception the software that turns songs played into digital music files still requires the user to manually mark the start and end of individual tracks. Why is this still true in 2008?

I had hoped that the dedicated Media Center Extenders being shown at CES would solve at least two of my problems with the Xbox 360 as an Extender:

• Problems updating the library used by the Extender in a timely manner (which I had no expectations would be solved by a dedicated Extender).
• The inability to play many common video codecs (such as H.264).
• The lack of fast forward and rewind transport functionality when playing audio files.

The second of these is addressed by the new Media Center Extenders, but, surprisingly not the last. According to Microsoft, the problem relates to a fairly simplistic design of how audio files are streamed. The person I spoke to indicted that it is something they are aware of and would like to address.

Until then, if you are buying a dedicated extender, maybe DLink has the best approach with their MediaLounge DSM-750. It acts as an Extender, but can also being used as a conventional UPnP media player that is not subject to some of the disadvantages of Extenders-- of course you don't get the plethora of Extender advantages when used in that mode, but maybe this is the best way to get the benefits of an extender, but not be locked out of accessing some key media.

Note: in theory the Xbox 360 could access this media when accessed from the Xbox 360 dashboard, but this has proved problematic due to some weird behavior and limitations of Windows Media Connect (which the 360 dashboard uses to access media on other PCs).

I like the design of the Roku Soundbridge networked audio player and the fact that it works with J River Media Center's UPnP server.

What I don't like is the lack of fast forward, skip or resume functionality within tracks. The lack of this functionality makes it almost impossible to listen to long podcasts, which I seldom have the opportunity to listen to in one sitting.

So far, however, the lack of UPnP functionality in other players with fast forward functionality was sufficient cause not to consider replacing our three Roku Soundbridges.

At CES today, however, I talked to Logitech about their Squeezebox Duet.

It will sell for about $400 (for both components pictured above, less for each). It can fast forward and rewind audio files that it can play natively (which include WMA and MP3 files-- but nothing with DRM). And it will work (but is not supported) with non-Logitech UPnP servers.

At $400, it's not a slam dunk. But it's nice to know that this product exists-- at a reasonable price and with a cool remote with a color screen. Maybe start with one...

At CES today, I couldn't help but notice that a huge number of companies are selling digital picture frames. Many are fairly generic.

The more intriguing ones have Wifi connectivity. Kodak has one, but based on the lack of enthusiasm or information from the woman and the Kodak booth it doesn't seem that impressive.

In contrast, D-Link has a pretty interesting 10" frame that they think will be for sale in the first quarter of 2008. This look is subject to change prior to release:

It gets photos from a UPnP server rather than requiring that they be manually transferred from the PC to the frame. Meaning if you have a nice UPnP server (like J River Media Center) you can do neat things without manual intervention.

Is can also get photos (and other information from RSS feeds) that you can create yourself using framechannel. You can select from among any number of feeds using the frame. This means that with a click of the frame's remote, you can do things like display the current weather or news headlines.

Talk about a thin client! Pretty cool for about $250,

Is Dahlia Garnick destined to the next Greg Packer? That was my thought upon viewing the photo gallery associated with the Slate story.

Ok, very little.

Perhaps the big story coming out of tomorrow's New Hampshire primary (albeit not right away) will be that New Hampshire (and by the transitive property, Iowa) doesn't matter nearly as much anymore. This will be true if, per Robert Novak, Clinton and/or Guiliani end up winning their parties nominations by winning the big states that follow.

My wife finally got sufficiently annoyed with the performance of our old Konica-Minolta Z3 that she pushed me into getting a better camera. The issues with the Z3 were poor indoor performance without a flash and flash recycle times of about 10 seconds. Hard to take pictures of kids with those constraints. I was wary of the larger size of a DSLR, but replacing the Z3 with a non-DSLR risked not solving these problems (see five reasons you need a digital SLR), so I went the DSLR route.

I bought the Canon XTi body, and 8GB CF card and three lenses:

• Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
• Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro APO

Total cost for everything, including an extra battery and filters: about $1100. The extra size does make me less likely to take the camera with me, but it's not an issue when taking photos around the house. In any event, I'm still looking for a small pocket sized camera that I can grab to take stills and video.

More on my DSLR purchase decision and rationales (as someone who does not pretend to be an advanced photographer, but wants some key capabilities)-- as well as a few early experiences later.

When we remodeled our house about two years ago, we have a variety of new X-10 outlets and switched installed wherever we had new outlets or switched. The incremental cost for between 20 and 30 of these nodes was less than $2,000, which seemed like a bargain in the context of the entire cost of the work.

Only recently have I begun to set up some of the automation that this made possible. We run HomeSeer on Small Business Server 2003 connected to a fairly simple PowerLinc USB controller.

This evening I expanded lighting control to four lamps in our grandiosely titled Media Room and five lamps and two picture lights in our living room. These rooms not only had no X-10 controls, but they had no switches on which a control could be installed. My solution was to use a keyfob remote and bunch of appliance control modules that are both Insteon and X-10 compatible.

Each set of on/off buttons on the keyfob would control the lights for one of the rooms. The keyfob only controls two X-10 addresses, so Homeseer would have to respond to action at one of those addresses by turning on or off all the other modules in the room. I also easily added HomeSeer instructions to turn on the picture lights automatically at dusk and off again late at night.

Once I figured our how to program the remote and set the addresses of the switching modules installation and programming time was a little over an hour. Total incremental project cost: about $300. Not a bad cost to be able to control the lights in two rooms by remote control.

A frequent regret concerning new personal technology (especially PCs) is that it should "just work" the way cars and DVD players do.

But there is a lot of non-computer technology that doesn't really "just work" either; among them:

• Battery back up sump pumps. In our case one rated for 180 minutes did not prevent an inch of water from accumulating in our basement within that time.
• Electrical power. In the two years we have lived in house (a couple of miles from the Chicago City limits) the power has failed about a half-dozen times for multiple-hour stretches.
• Lampshades. Our dining room chandelier has had problems with correctly rated bulbs getting the shade hot enough to create a brown spot.
• Yard drainage. There is an are of our yard that is always damp, even after installing a series of french drains.
• Cameras. It is very difficult/expensive to take nice indoor shots in the evening without a flash that creates unnatural lighting.
• High Speed Internet. When our Comcast service works it is great, but recently we have been experiencing several outages a month. (Ok, maybe this is computer technology too.)
• Office Building HVAC. A common complaint of office tenants is that individuals' office temperatures are off by 5 degrees or more. It may not sound like much, but who wants to work in a 65 degree or 75 degree office?

Recently, J River made some additions to their Media Center product that has greatly improved its ability to work with photos tagged using the XMP standard (which is used by Microsoft in Vista and Adobe in Photoshop Elements among other places). Most significantly for me, this means that I can now make use of all of the tag information in Media Center for my 500+ photos within Vista Media Center.

This functionality doesn't come in the form of a simple Wizard and perhaps is not in a form that is for the faint of heart, but it is incredibly useful. For those interested in the process, take a look at my entries on J River's message board as well as a Wiki entry I penned on the subject.