You are looking at posts that were written in the month of March in the year 2008.
Posted on March 28th, 2008 by Tim.
Categories: Business/The Software Industry, Tim.
Next time you’re in an interview for a technical position, try to find out the favored comic at that company. If the favorite comic is Dilbert, be on the lookout for PHBs. If the favorite comic is XKCD, you probably want to accept an offer. If the favorite comic is Garfield, I don’t know what it means, but you probably want to run like hell.
Posted on March 23rd, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, Politics.
I feel obligated to write this because I’ve seen so much talk on the Internet about abolishing the Fed and reinstating the gold standard. I find that in general, whenever a group on the Internet are alarmed, the panic is overblown or misdirected. I have some OCD hangups about this. Here goes.
First of all, when the Fed prints money, it does make itself richer at the expense of people who hold the currency. That’s called seigniorage, if you’d like a cocktail party word for it, and it results in inflation. A gold standard replaces this fiat money with money that is backed by a certain weight in gold. Because this weight is constant, it eliminates inflation. However, this can have undesirable side effects, and there are very good arguments against reinstating a gold standard.
In a gold standard, the supply of currency is dependent on gold mining, meaning the supply is not controlled. This can result in a currency shortage, deflation, which makes it worthwhile to hoard currency. Milton Friedman argued that this overrestriction of currency was part of the cause of the Great Depression; Ben Bernanke, the current Fed chair, wrote his thesis on that.
The Fed is an strange institution, run by economic technocrats that are insulated from government influence. This makes them seem both shadowy and unaccountable; however, this intentionally insulates them from the rest of government, where election cycles drive a desire to pump money into the economy. (It’s quite an ideological irony that the modern free market economy is dependent on the good intentions of a few economic professors.) Greenspan, the former Fed chair, was known for being nostalgic for the gold standard:
Greenspan famously argued the case for returning to a gold standard in his 1966 paper “Gold and Economic Freedom“, in which he described supporters of fiat currencies as “welfare statists” hell-bent on using monetary printing presses to finance deficit spending. He has argued that the fiat money system of today has retained the favorable properties of the gold standard because central bankers have pursued monetary policy as if a gold standard were still in place.
A fiat currency is far more flexible than a gold backed one in dealing with cyclical recessions (which did, by the way, occur when the gold standard existed as well). Anyone who argues that the Fed can’t hold down currency is not familiar with Fed history; anyone who thinks the a more accountable government institution would necessarily do any better should be careful.
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Second of all, if you love the gold standard and Fed-free currency so much, is it best to go through the government? Private currencies do in fact exist, though their legal status is questionable–perhaps something should be done about that. An official gold standard still involves trusting the feds not to abuse it, as they have done in the past. The fact is, governments always abuse, or are prone to abuse, currency, gold and otherwise; if you really want to avoid this sort of inflationary pressure, then it is necessary to make a responsible government institution, use a non governmental currency, or use a mechanical currency.
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The Fed depends on the ability of economists to manage the money supply in a prudent manner; inflation, when it comes, is an indication (though not necessarily proof) of irresponsibility. There are plenty of objections to such a system, as political as they are economic. But the solutions will not come from tying our money supply to the vagaries of mining a metal that comes out of the ground, or pretending government isn’t run by human beings.
If your government doesn’t have monetary-policy credibility, attempting to establish that credibility by going on the Gold Standard is a recipe for disaster. If your government does have monetary-policy credibility, going on the Gold Standard doesn’t gain you anything…
Posted on March 20th, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Chris, General/Misc., Tim, UI Design.
[14:38] Me: http://
[14:38] Gas: lmao
[14:38] Gas: funny thing about the downslope
[14:39] Gas: the problem is that[sic] the features aren’t discoverable
[14:39] Gas: in my mind though, that’s a solvable problem
[14:39] Gas: the real problem
[14:39] Gas: is that the more features you have, the more spread your engineering effort is
[14:39] Gas: testing, bugfixes, etc.
[14:39] Me: hmm
[14:39] Me: i think they’re both part of the problem
[14:39] Gas: the first problem is an essentially UI problem
[14:40] Gas: in theory, i think all UI problems can be solved
[14:40] Me: why?
[14:40] Gas: if a person can explain what they want to do, and assuming that feature exists, then a person should be able to explain to a computer what they want to do
[14:40] Gas: this is of course at a very theoretical level
[14:41] Me: a person can’t always explain what they want to do
[14:41] Gas: that’s a requirement
[14:41] Me: ?
[14:41] Gas: if they can’t explain what they want, they aren’t going to get it no matter what
[14:41] Gas: so it doesn’t matter whether the feature exists or not
[14:42] Gas: unless we know what they’re going to want and tell them what they want
[14:42] Me: it’s like a menu
[14:42] Gas: feature != menu item though
[14:42] Me: i may want duck a la’range
[14:42] Me: but not know what i want
[14:42] Me: infinite features are possible in a restaurant
[14:42] Gas: duck a la’range?
[14:42] Me: idk
[14:42] Me: it was in a sbemail
[14:42] Me: i forget which
[14:42] Gas: lol
[14:42] Me: anyways
[14:43] Me: i could tell the chefs what i want and how it should be made
[14:43] Me: but, for whatever reason, that doesn’t work except for chefs (programmers)
[14:43] Me: alternatively, i could have a menu with every conceivable item
[14:43] Me: but that’s ridiculous - the menu would be 1 billion pages
[14:43] Me: so the menu has a limited selection of items
[14:44] Me: and makes it easier for me to find something i want
[14:44] Gas: that’s an interesting analogy
[14:44] Me: it may not be perfect
[14:44] Gas: but
[14:44] Me: but it’s something i like
[14:44] Gas: here’s another analogy
[14:44] Gas: that manages to bind the two
[14:44] Me: ooooooooooh
[14:44] Gas: so you know that gas station
[14:44] Gas: that serves the food
[14:44] Gas: what’s it called?
[14:45] Me: sheetz
[14:45] Gas: thanks
[14:45] Gas: yeah
[14:45] Gas: sheetz goes one step closer to being a chef
[14:45] Gas: rather than a menu
[14:45] Me: sheetz….umm, sheetz has a menu
[14:45] Gas: and there’s no reason it has to be a physical menu being displayed
[14:45] Me: i’ve been there
[14:45] Me: the menu is just a touch screen
[14:45] Me: and instead of asking you if you want pepper
[14:45] Gas: yes, and everything is customizable
[14:45] Me: there’s a pepper checkbox
[14:46] Me: that’s all
[14:46] Gas: ok
[14:46] Gas: now extend that one step further
[14:46] Gas: no explicit menu
[14:46] Gas: but a voice recognition system
[14:46] Gas: “i want a burger with cheese”
[14:46] Gas: adding new features clutters no old features
[14:46] Gas: it’s a UI problem
[14:46] Me: well
[14:46] Me: your UI model works
[14:47] Me: let me try and explain where it differs
[14:47] Me: lets say i’m at a restaurant with no menu
[14:47] Me: i tell the waiter i want a burger
[14:47] Me: i can order whatever i want
[14:47] Me: and there’s no limitation
[14:47] Me: right?
[14:47] Me: but, there IS a limitation
[14:48] Me: where did i come up with this idea of “burger”?
[14:48] Me: from my own head, of course
[14:48] Me: so, we’ve basically moved the set of available actions
[14:48] Me: from a screen, where i don’t have to remember it
[14:48] Me: to my head, where i do
[14:49] Me: the UI will always be simple, since it only does what i want it to do
[14:49] Me: but i’m limited by what i know how to want
[14:49] Me: http://
Posted on March 17th, 2008 by Chris.
Categories: Business/The Software Industry, Chris, Thinking Outside the WTF.
…as long as it’s cheap.
Ever since the RIAA crackdown on illegal downloading, there’s been quite a drop in CD sales. And iTunes sales have gone up substantially. But the reason isn’t that users feel that DRM is bad, just that illegal downloading and iTunes are both cheaper. The Kindle not selling enough? Maybe because it’s $400. [no citation available, just see for yourself] At least the books are cheap.
Perhaps, it’s not about restricting rights all the way to the point of controlling everything we see and do. Maybe it’s just about the money.
