Tipsy Regulation
Published on 14 Jun 2006 at 10:49 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Brain Trust, Government: Federal, State and Local.
Check out this little piece of absurdity over at Coyote Blog…
One wonders if the regulators have been drinking. It also occurs to me to wonder if there are regulatory implications of gay marriage in this context… 
I truly wish I had something more substantive to add, but my mind is boggled by this degree of regulatory over-reach. I can’t say I’m honestly surprised, but I am appalled.
I’d like to see a constitutionally mandated sunset/re-confirmation process for all legislation, but now I realize we need the same thing on the regulatory side. Seems hopeless. How do we scrape the cruft off of legislation and regulation? Suggestions most welcome.
More Retirement
Published on 13 Jun 2006 at 11:22 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Principal Acronyms Only, Winners and Losers, Economics and the Economy.
This story via EmploymentBlawg… Warns us that close to half of the current work force will not be able to maintain their standard of living when they retire. Which is bad enough, until you read a little further down and discover that their calculations are including a "smaller percentage" from Social Security. I suppose zero qualifies as "smaller" but I don’t think they’ve allowed for that, even though they’re talking about people now in their 30s. I commented on Social Security at length here: Cargo Cult Retirement
I may have stated elsewhere that I find it very intimidating to contemplate just how diffcult it really is to accumulate adequate retirement savings. The math involved gets pretty complex, and the time spans involved make estimation tricky at best, but here’s what my calculations say:
IF we assume the following simplifying assumptions (which I’ve tried to bias in a favorable way):
1. An 18 year old begins making 100K/year immediately and continues to do so until retirement at 65.
2. He or She expects to live to be 90.
3. On the average over his or her lifetime retirement savings earns 8% interest.
4. The goal is to leave no money unspent.
5. Taxes on interest have been ignored, the money saved is not counted as prior year income.
6. 73% of prior year gross is needed after retirement.
Our 18 year old will need to immediately begin saving over $19000 per year and continue to do so throughout his employment. Since, generously speaking, only about two/thirds of the gross is take home pay, he needs to contribute about one third of his take home pay to savings for retirement, starting day one and continuing every year until 65.
He’d better hope he gets better than 8% and finds some tax advantages (IRA, 401K). I think for many people their house serves as a forced savings plan which can be figured in, reducing the percentage somewhat.
By all means, tell me I’m wrong. I want to be wrong…
Review: On Bullshit
Published on 12 Jun 2006 at 12:51 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business.
On Bullshit
Harry G. Frankfurt
I read this delightful little book yesterday, and in my effort to keep Cargo Cult somewhere close to on topic, I couldn’t have done any better.
Mr. Frankfurt discusses his title concept with refreshing mental clarity, a sense of humor, and yes, perhaps just a bit of BS of his own.
The book opens with this remark:
"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit."
From that auspicious begining he continues with discussion and description of bullshit, what it is, and what it is not. Along the way he, by way of contrast or comparison, touches on lies, hot air, humbug, and bluff. Among others, he quotes examples or supporting evidence from Pound, Wittgenstein, and St. Augustine.
All in all a great read, and notable how succinctly it expresses what we all knew. My favorite in that category is this:
"Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he’s talking about."
This is by far my favorite book this year, and certainly the most enjoyment for the minute spent reading it.
Quick Notes on Fuel Efficient Cars
Published on 10 Jun 2006 at 11:31 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Business and Corporation Related, Pure Geek.
Pursuant to my previous comments about fuel efficiency and purchase strategy; Here are two links touching on the subject…
Somehow I missed that the XPrize people are planning a fuel efficiency prize.
I’ve been intrigued by these ever since I saw them in Europe. I’m not convinced that they’re great, but they sure are interesting and at 70 mpg highway, they’re definitely on the list for high miles per gallon.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Published on 9 Jun 2006 at 1:37 am by Oliver |
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Filed under The Engine Room, Technopolitical, Information Technology, Economics and the Economy.
There are some ideas, and some predictions, which sound appealing and yet, over and over again, manage to not come true. Will they, some day? Some day is a long time, and experience teaches a person never to say never, so let’s define an upper bound: current thinking says the sun will explode in about 8 billion years, so if we can safely say something hasn’t happened by then, it ain’t gonna happen.
Armed with a pint of Fuller’s finest ale, this writer predicts that among the things that will not have happened by then are:
- video conferencing as a popular, ubiquitous means of communication.
- depletion of petroleum supplies.
- the death of Moore’s Law
- multi-chip packages, where multi is greater than two.
The first two are obvious. The last two require a bit of explanation. As the supply of ale is short, I shall focus on number 4 for now, and leave Dr. Moore for another day.
Almost since the invention of ICs (and to some extent before), people have thought it would be neat if you could package up a bunch of silicon chips into a package, and then encapsulate it, rather than packing each chip individually. It would indeed be neat, and useful. The latest proponent is a nice fellow from Georgia Tech named Rao Tummula. Writing in the June 2006 issue of IEEE Spectrum, he waxes eloquently about the potential of this technology. “By 2010,” he says, “the more than Moore’s Law movement, which focuses on system integration rather than transistor density, will lead to revolutionary megafunction electronics.”
Sounds good. The article continues in a somewhat breathless tone, rather more Popular Science than peer-reviewed science. It shows a picture of a device with silicon and gallium-arsenide devices, featuring both optical and electrical interconnects. And indeed, it would be a wonderful thing to build. But….
Among the challenges are:
- thermal stress management
- heat dissipation
- component fabrication precision
- design validation and verification
- testability
Dr. Tummula goes on to say “we need not compromise speed, cost, time to market, or reliability.” Wow. The flip side of that is the old proverb “Good, Fast, Cheap – pick any two.”
So why won’t this nirvana come to pass? There are a number of challenges to be solved. Moreover, many bright people have worked hard on solving them, and founded companies based on the current state of technology, and failed. Utterly. Why?
One reason is commonly referred to as Known Good Die, or KGD. ICs are tested, via probes, and the wafer level, then diced, then packaged. Packaging affects the exact electrical characteristics of the die; parts can be faster, or slower, as a result of packaging. As a result, it’s tough to design a circuit that depends on specific electrical characteristics of the device. Designs which work when built with discretely-packaged parts may not work if built with bare-die multi-chip modules.
Another factor is thermal stress. Silicon has a coefficient of expansion. Other materials are different. Direct bonding of silicon to such materials leads to mechanical stresses and chip death. Plastic IC packages absorb the difference. You can use silicon as a substrate, but silicon, even ultra-pure, is enough of a conductor to be sub-optimum.
It’s possible to fabricate resistors and capacitors in the substrate materials. However, it’s not easy to fabricate them to the levels of precision we’ve come to expect. Once upon a time, 20% was considered the standard tolerance for most resistor and capacitors; today 5% is the benchmark for discrete parts. Thin-film techniques can’t yet match that.
Furthermore, most system designs still involve a bit of cut-and-try, in one form or another. Discrete technology allows rework, integrated technology doesn’t. Wrong capacitor value? Fab a whole new substrate.
Individually, these are all solvable problems, and indeed, there are specialty makers of hybrid modules that prosper even today. Why, then, do I predict another round of failure?
The companies that survive are in niche markets, mostly military. These markets can afford the cost. No company that has ventured into the mainstream commercial market has survived. MMC? gone. Strand Interconnect? gone.
Bet not your money. Better to invest in a pint and stick with Moore’s Law, the end of which is not in sight.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder– Again
Published on 8 Jun 2006 at 10:44 pm by Ringo |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Health and Safety, Main Stream Media.
I suppose it would be appropriate to investigate the actual clinical description etc. before commenting on whether this Intermittent Explosive Disorder should be considered an actual medical disorder, but what the heck, this isn’t a peer reviewed journal article and I’m about as far from being a mental health professional as one can conceiveably be. So, let fools rush in…
Based on the BBC story John linked, it sounds like IED is believed to be an organic condition.
For example:
Professor Emil Coccaro added: "In the general population, aggressiveness or ‘blowing up’ is considered bad behaviour.
"But IED goes beyond that, having strong genetic and biomedical underpinnings.
"If people think these explosive outbursts are just bad behaviour, they are not thinking of this problem as a serious biomedical problem that can be treated."
Toward the end of the article another expert, Dr. Khoosal, is quoted:
"In the UK that would extrapolate to a lot of people, although there are cultural factors which could have an effect - we wouldn’t confront someone who was ranting and raving and we don’t have the same gun culture," he said.
A few possible inferences:
1. That somehow guns and culture are believed to create medical and genetic problems?
2. That Professor Coccaro and Dr. Khoosal differ about whether this is an organic condition or a cultural one?
3. That the BBC wants us to believe that 1 is true and have selectively quoted the experts to give this appearance.
4. That the cultural differences prevent the disorder in the UK and/or exacerbate it in the US?
5. Or, that on the contrary the incidence is similar but the cultural differences make it more difficult to detect in the UK?
I’m especially curious to know the context of Dr. Khoosal’s remarks. The article says, "But he added that the prevalence seemed ‘pretty high’." Does he mean that incidence in the study seems higher than is to be expected? Or, that on the contrary, his experience is that the prevalance is high in general, and therefore he’s not surprised by these numbers? Furthermore, on what is he indicating that the culture has an effect? The incidence of the disease? The seriousness of the episodes? The difficulty of seperating IED episodes from typical cultural practice?
Amid so much ambiguity, I’m left wondering why the things which were left out were left out, why the things included were included. Is it simply to support an implication that while the specific victims of this disorder are not to be held responsible, that American culture is somehow culpable, or should I never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence?
IED?
Published on 7 Jun 2006 at 1:51 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Main Stream Media.
Various references to this, such as this story at the BBC, have been floating around the blogosphere and the web in general lately… I even saw a reference to it in a dead-tree paper yesterday. The headlines so closely resemble those about Iraq that I’m continually reading "Improvised Explosive Device" when they mean "Intermittent Explosive Disorder." Or, maybe some people are "Improvised Explosive Devices," or perhaps they just have one… or suffer from one…
For that matter "Intermittent Explosive Disorder" sounds like the sort of problem which might be encountered in the construction or disposal of an IED… Perhaps the explosives are out of order, or disorderly. Perhaps road rage is particularly likely when driving a truck bomb… Imagine being cut off in traffic while driving a couple of tons of high explosives around. It might get on one’s nerves.
Ebay Sniping
Published on 6 Jun 2006 at 1:06 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Brain Trust, Economics and the Economy.
I first heard of auction "sniping" from a couple of co-workers, about two years ago. At first I really thought they were having some fun at my expense. Watching their behaviour — both of them nearly compulsive auction snipers — and reading up a bit on it I soon discovered that they were entirely serious.
Knowing as I did that ebay allows proxy bidding I found the practice of sniping, especially to the extent that it had a name and whole websites devoted to debating its merits, what one of my co-workers called a "noodle-baker."
As an occaisional seller on ebay*, I was absolutely unable to see what the fuss was about. Recently I’ve bid on a few items and made a few purchases. I think I now have a little understanding of some of the strong feelings surrounding the practice.
Proxy bidding allows the buyer to set a maximum bid for an item, and then the software automatically raises that bid until it either meets that maximum or the auction is "won." This means that as long as one sets the proxy bid at one’s true highest price, one can never truly be "sniped."
I recently made a bid on an item. I made the bid as soon as I saw the thing, without doing as much research as I should, and the bid I made was about half of what it should have been. Since the going rate was considerably lower as the auction neared its end, I never raised my proxy amount. In the final seconds of the auction, the item was "sniped." I felt a moment of distinct annoyance as my assumption that I was getting an item for $45, when I felt it was worth $100, crumble. It had sold to someone else for $51!
Two fallacies:
1. Over the week of having the highest bid, some irrational part of the back of my mind had already "completed" the transaction. It was mine, I’d "paid" for it, etc. An unworthy thought, but true.
2. I had not actually bid the full amount I’d been willing to pay, due largely to laziness, and partly to the first fallacy above. Had I done so, I’d have reacted differently. "Better you than me, brother" would probably have summed it up, as I watched someone else pay too much.
There’s another fallacy which I suspect creeps into some people’s thinking, though I didn’t experience it, and that’s the idea of "just a few percent more". It’s similar to "in for a penny, in for a pound." When one bids $100 on something, and then someone else gets it for $101, it’s easy to convince oneself that another 1% wouldn’t have mattered. This allows for either terrific price creep or chronic dissapointment in an auction evironment.
Still, while I now understand some of the frustration with the "victims", even if it’s based on folly and irrationality, I can’t see why anyone would practice sniping. Perhaps they’re hunting for people who did what I did but that seems like a pretty low percentage game. In every other auction I’ve ever bid they would merely have paid more than I was willing to pay, and it wouldn’t have mattered when they did it, or they would have been out bid by my proxy. In the latter case, since they’re counting on how fast they can type in higher and higher bids, they’re likely to "snipe" themselves!
In the end, I think the whole thing is pretty crazy. My guess is that it’s one of those weird little quirks of humna nature, like repeatedly pushing elevator buttons, which effects some a great deal more than others. Oh well, I’ve been known to impatiently push that button, so who am I to judge. I’ll just be sure to set my proxy at my highest bid from now on and let them snipe away!
* I sold an 8 pack of old Pepsi bottles! Actually they were old enough to be kind of cool….
Work Environment
Published on 5 Jun 2006 at 11:53 am by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Business and Corporation Related.
HowStuffWorks (a highly reccomended site by the way) asks How Should Work, Work?
Which allows me to get back on topic, because one way of summing of the topic of CargoCult.biz is just that: How Should Work, Work? (Although we also get into some discussion of how it fails to work, and other things somewhat off topic…)
It looks like the folks at How Stuff Works, and the first commenter there, are kind of limiting themselves to the Dilbert office worker, cubicle denizen model. I can’t blame them, it helps to keep things manageable, but when I think of my ideal work environment, the first thing that comes to my mind is flexibility. Some days I want quiet, some days I need to interact, some days I need to go somewhere on site for something, some days I have pressing personal matters but don’t want to be absent from my work entirely. For all of that you can’t beat telecommuting.
I hope that we’re going to see a slow but steady shift to a situation in which most people are at least partially telecommuting. Sure, there are many jobs which don’t lend themselves to it, police officers and firefighters won’t be working from home to any great degree, and there are many jobs in which people aren’t cursed with the cube farm to begin with. Sales folks, contractors, and the above mentioned police and fire fighters have a long tradition of getting out of the office, and no one is very surprised to see their desk empty, or run into them on the road.
Which brings me to the point which is the biggest challenge to more common telecommuting. It’s not technology, that’s pretty much working. Rather, it’s culture. Many companies can’t allow for it, many managers can’t manage it (or panic in fear that they can’t), and unfortunately some individuals can’t handle it and be productive. I’m hopeful though, I think those folks mentioned above can point the way. They manage to spend a lot of time out of the office and still be very productive, their organizations seem to manage to communicate with them, and their managers seem to know how to manage them.
Technology does have a role to play in easing the acceptance, increasing productivity, and opening up new kinds of work. Cheaper VPN, faster (and cheaper) broadband, and more pervasive wireless are ongoing trends, but there’s still lots of room for improvement.
Sure, some people are still going to spend a lot of time in the office, but as culture and technology develop, and what constitutes work shifts, many of us may find the cube farm a thing of the past.
Irrational Gas and Cheap Pickups
Published on 4 Jun 2006 at 11:57 pm by John |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Economics and the Economy.
A posting recently at Coyote Blog, asked whether people are rational about gasoline prices. I’d certainly say they’re not. My brother was recently looking at used cars and noticed a large number of late model full-sized pickups for sale at what he considered bargain prices. His remark was "Buying a new car to save money on gas is never gonna work." (He was also quite adamant on the distinction between buying a new car and buying a used car for this purpose.)
That discussion and the CoyoteBlog post got me to wondering. How many miles would you have to drive the new car before the gas savings would pay off the cost of it?
Such a calculation involves making a lot of assumptions. Let us use a few which simplify things somewhat.
1. We’ll treat it as though the new car is bought with cash (no interest charges).
2. We’ll also ignore the lost interest/opportunity cost of that cash.
3. It seems that the biggest advantage comes from selling off a car with truly terrible gas mileage. So we’ll use the lowest mpg vehicle I can find among the common brands.
4. We’ll use epa combined mpg numbers even though they’re accuracy is somewhat in doubt. They should be OK for comparisons…
5. For the price of gas I’ll use the last price I paid at the pump: $2.89
According to the epa, there’s a Dodge 8.3 litre pickup which gets 11 mpg, or 26.2 cents per mile. So, we’ll start by selling that off. What shall we replace it with?
A. Another Dodge, the Stratus is rated at 25 mpg, 11.56 cents per mile, and list price of $20,500
B. Honda Insight has the very highest rating, 63 mpg, 4.6 cents per mile, and a list of $19,330
C. And, what if we went for best mpg / dollar… something like the Kia Rio at 33mpg, 8.7 cents per mile, and $10,770
A. Saving 14.64 cents per mile, we’ll pay off the $20,500 in 140K miles.
B. Saving 21.6 cents per mile, we’ll pay off the $19,330 in 89,500 miles.
C. Saving 17.5 cents per mile, we’ll pay off the $10,770 in 61,500 miles.
Conclusion: Is it worth it? It depends. Probably not, unless your present vehicle gets truly awful mileage, and you’re willing to buy something cheap with high MPG and keep it for a long time. Even at that, cars don’t last forever, and given the length of time we’re talking about, it probably would make more sense to hold on to the present car and weigh gas mileage along with all the other factors when replacement time rolls around. Or, buy a high mpg used car at a very low price which could pay for itself very quickly.
I don’t claim to be an authority, if you think my math is wrong or I’ve missed something, drop me a note.
