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The StarPhoenix editorial entitled "Remaining open to scrutiny keeps science credible", says that "Skepticism and criticism is the way science grows."
Am I the only one that finds it beyond ironic that the same article labels those would scrutinize climate science reports as "denying climate change"?
Bruce on 02.08.10 @ 03:38 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Just the other day, a so-called economist from one of our big five banks was indicating he now estimated there would be 100,000 jobs created in 2010. Well, I'm starting to get a little irked with this notion of "job creation".
Bruce on 01.29.10 @ 01:35 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
So, I'm on a couple of survey panels, and sometimes the questions leave me scratching my head how I can possibly answer them accurately. Particularly the political ones.
Today, a survey asks me: "Thinking about Saskatchewan, would you say these services are good or poor? Lottery and gaming..."
Well, I think the government is way overinvolved in lottery and gaming (and most if not all other services too). So, that would rate as "very poor". However, that would most likely be interpreted as meaning as wanting more government involvement in lottery and gaming. So then I should answer "very good". But it isn't very good.
Argh!
Bruce on 12.02.09 @ 11:11 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
In a week, our city will have held their triennial elections. In preparation, the city has mailed out pamphlets saying that "YOUR VOTE COUNTS". Unfortunately, I don't see any way to make my vote count the way I want it to.
I don't trust any of the candidates, either for my region or for mayor, to make even a majority of decisions that I agree with. The incumbents have proven otherwise, and the platforms of the challengers are worse. So what's a voter to do?
If there ever was, there no longer appears to be any way of indicating a vote of "no confidence" in the candidates. If there was, I would use this without question.
I can boycott the election, stay home, and have my vote is counted with the apathetic.
I can vote for nobody, spoil my ballot, and have my vote is counted with the incompetent.
Or, I can hold my nose, and tick the box next to the candidate that I think is going to make things worse the slowest. That's hardly the most appealing choice.
There really seems to be no wholly positive answer to what to do with elections.
Bruce on 10.22.09 @ 06:14 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
I am fed up with people repeating the meme that the current financial problems have been caused by "unbridled" or "unregulated" capitalism. See here, here, here, and here for just a few such articles, which are repeated ad nauseum in comments all over the place.
Oh, please! This is complete and unvarnished baloney.
North America, and the USA in particular, has not seen anything resembling unregulated capitalism in at least 100 years, if ever. Truely unbridled or unregulated capitalism would have no rules imposed on it by the government, but I doubt that has ever been true anywhere in the world.
The USA has minimum wage laws, public services, zoning laws, the Federal Reserve System, the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, the TTB, Fair Housing, the FDIC, the FTC, and many, many more.
Leave aside for a moment the arguments over whether or not these rules are beneficial or not. With all these thousands of pages of regulations prescribing what businesses must and must not do, added to many government sponsored entities adding false competition to the economy, it is far from the truth that North America is experiencing "unregulated" anything.
Please stop this myth!
Bruce on 04.15.09 @ 02:09 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
An article on CTV.ca today warns that "One-fifth of childhood injuries happen at school". Because of this, they recommend that "more adult supervision may be needed".
While I don't disagree that adult supervision is necessarily a bad thing, let's look at the reality of the numbers.
In Saskatoon at least, children attend school from 9:00AM until 3:30AM. Many also play before and after school, but let's assume they don't. That amounts to 6.5 hours per day, 5 days a week, for a total of 32.5 hours a week at school. There are a total of 168 hours in a week. Do the math, and that means children are at school for 19.3% of the time, or just under one-fifth, in total.
But it gets better. Let's assume the children get eight hours of sleep per day. This will vary, of course, but it's probably a good lower estimate when considering that the younger children sometimes get much more. This adds up to 56 hours a week. Assuming the childhood injuries reported in the article only happen when the children are awake, this leaves 112 hours a week during which the injuries can occur. Of those hours, children spend about 30% of their time at school.
Now also consider that schools have both organized physical activity programs (aka gym class), and unorganized physical activity (recesses). Both of these will necessarily increase the risk for injury, as physical activity is a basic necessary precondition for being injured. On the other hand, while at home some do very little activity that could result in injuries. Those that are active, are frequently in organized sports of various kinds, which help train children in different ways to be active without injury. Actually, being inactive at home probably increases the risk of injury at school, but I have no numbers to back that up.
Given the reality of the statistics, and the physical conditions, I don't find any particular cause for alarm in this "one-fifth" number. If anything, our children are overprotected already -- not necessarily at school, but all over.
Bruce on 02.19.09 @ 12:43 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
I don't get it.
We have been told for years if not decades how North America has a minuscule savings rate. How we aren't saving enough. Worse than that, the savings rate is dropping, and has now reached zero or even negative savings in places (meaning that as a whole the group is spending more than it is earning). How this will cause financial problems in the future if the trend is not reversed.
NOW that the predicted financial problems are starting to show, now we are being told we need to spend even more. Not only that, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Canada are dropping their interest rates into uncharted low territories to induce people to take out loans to spend more.
If a lack of savings was bad, how is this making it better and not worse? Sure, in the short term it means we're spending more money, but in the long term it will make recovery even harder and more painful.
Bruce on 12.22.08 @ 12:44 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]
In an article entitled "Bitter economic lessons learned" (Saskatoon StarPhoenix Friday November 28, 2008), Joe Jeerakathil writes regarding the current economic downturn:
The ascendant market fundamentalism, which upheld religiously that an unfettered market left to its own devices will offer the best path to economic nirvana, became the gospel of the Reagan revolution. Uncritical embracing of this orthodoxy led U.S. lawmakers to loosen the role of regulatory bodies in the pretext of promoting easier flow of capital. Wall Street enjoyed a free hand. The result has been the current mess. ... [Economists Keynes and Galbraith] warned the world about the endemic instability of the free market system with its cyclical swings.
Many times, when political issues are discussed in the news, you will hear politicians and pundits declare that they are seeking to find a balance in resolving the issue.
This is complete whitewash.
Invariably, the two "sides" to the issue that are presented involve doing little on one side, and doing too much on the other. Notice I didn't say doing "too little". When government decides to change their involvement in an issue, it's normally a question of how much more they are going to do. Doing nothing is effectively never even put up for discussion.
Given how much the state is involved in nearly every issue, the idea of it doing less should be up for discussion. However, heaven forbid any politician should ever bring that up. It's practically a political death sentence, for all but a small minority.
So, when the balance being sought is between doing a little and doing a lot, be sure that no matter what kind of balance is struck, the state will be larger than before. This can mean a number of things, but it usually involves more bureauracy, more laws, and more police or more policing in one way or another.
It also means more taxes. More of your money getting sucked away from productive measures to satisfy those bureaucrats who have a burning desire to be seen as "doing something"... and it's your money their desire is burning.
This is somewhat like the negotiation strategy of demanding far more than you really want to get, knowing full well that the other side will be forced to negotiate down to somewhere in the middle anyways. The difference in this case is that no matter what they ask for, it will be more than before, and any illusion of a balance between two sides is just that -- an illusion.
Bruce on 11.27.08 @ 10:30 AM CST [link] [No Comments]
While watching this year's Santa Clause parade in our city, I found myself surrounded by a variety of people, as can be expected at this sort of event. Our daughters were performing baton twirling in the parade, so we were there as proud parents to cheer them on and take photos.
The city government ran an entry in the parade consisting of a car with the mayor's name on it and the mayor himself walking behind it waving at the crowd. Later, the local members of the provincial government ran an entry in the parade, which similarly consisted of a couple cars with the MLA's names on them, and one of the MLAs walking behind it. It sounds pretty boring, and it was, but what else would you really expect?
When the mayor's car inched past, I heard generally nothing from the people around me, other than the normal crowd noise, a little cheering, and maybe somebody giving recognition that they knew who it was. When the provincial government car inched past, the man beside me all but spat on the ground in his disgust, using words like "unbelieveble", "that gang" etc. He sounded both disgusted and genuinely surprised that these politicians would want to show their faces in public.
OK, I get that you didn't vote for the current political leaders. I can't say I agree with everything they've done neither. I am however astonished at the level of hostility that was expressed there. What's the deal? Is it normal to villify those who differ in their poitics?
What is doubly surprising to me is the difference in the reception of the two government floats. They are both politicians, just at different levels. Both our mayor and the province's governing party are considered to be "right wing" in their ideologies. Both have passed some bills that have benefitted businesses, and given preferential treatment. So why the indifference to one and disgust for the other?
Bruce on 11.23.08 @ 11:56 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Throughout virtually all kinds of political discussions the political spectrum is divided into two extremes. Known most accurately as the left and the right, they are also called other names. Democrat and Republican. Liberal and conservative. Communist and fascist. etc.
Sadly, the definitions of "left" and "right" are slippery and constantly changing. They originate in the old British legislative cabinet, where the conservative (Tory) party sat on the right side and the progressive (Liberal) party sat on the right. However, in those days, the Tories were more concerned about keeping the status quo, and the Liberals about promoting liberty. Today, the right generally connotes free enterprise and a strong military, while the left generally connotes egalitarianism and state controlled social welfare.
In any case, they are defined as two diametrically opposing directions on the political spectrum, and usually the only two directions. This kind of dualism leads to long-held but nonsensical observations about the nature of the left and the right. For example, it is commonly said that in their extreme forms, the left and right actually meet in the middle. Given that the ideals of left and right-wing politics are irreconcilably opposed, this is complete bafflegab.
This doesn't however explain how communism, as seen through Lenin and Mao, and fascism, as seen through Hitler and Mussolini, had many things in common. It also doesn't explain those who are anarchists with both communal and free-market views. To explain this, there must be another dimension.
The Political Compass points out that there are two dimensions or axes to the so-called one-dimensional political spectrum. That is the economic axis, on which the left and right labels fall, and the social axis. The social spectrum grades between authoritarians and libertarians.
By the way, please take the time to take the test to get a better idea of where you really stand before reading much more on the site. It is worth the time. As it says on the front page, "there's no right, wrong or ideal response. It's simply a measure of attitudes and inevitable human contradictions to provide a more integrated definition of where people and parties are really at."
Adding this second dimension makes it much more apparent what actually happened with the so-called extreme forms of left and right-wing politics. These extreme forms, embodied in communism and fascism, were not so much extremely left or right but rather extremely authoritarian. Their policies placed most of the decision making power out of the hands of individuals and into the hands of the state.
It is no longer enough to simply label political figures as left-wing or right-wing, assuming it was ever enough. Remember this when you read such reports, and realize there is more to the picture than just a line.
Bruce on 09.26.08 @ 02:09 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
CTV is reporting that seniors are "not quite embracing generic drugs", according to a study by Medco Health Solutions Inc. in the USA.
What the study actually says is that "The majority of seniors only switched to generics after they reached the point in spending when users must pick up the whole cost of prescriptions." Apparently, after they actually have to pay for the drugs, they do embrace the generics.
Really? And this is in the least bit surprising? Psychologically, even if you educate people that generics are equally effective as brand-name drugs, the price alone makes the brand-name drugs more desirable. Since the seniors don't have to pick up the whole cost of the prescription normally, why not get the more desirable drugs? After all, they're not picking up the tab, except in their taxes which don't change if they need more or more expensive drugs.
After all, when you go to an all-you can eat buffet, what do you eat? Do you stick to the cheaper foods because that will make it less expensive for everybody, or do you stuff yourself as much as possible with all of the choicest bits? It doesn't matter how much you eat, you still pay the same amount, so go wild.
As the saying goes: If you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it's free. (P.J. O'Rourke)
Bruce on 09.25.08 @ 04:52 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Recently, Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, has warned that cell phone use may cause cancer. Really, as warnings go, this is old news, frequently reported but never conclusively proven. I use a cell phone (occasionally) but I refuse to be panicked until something more substantial develops.
The really foolish part of his warning is this: "Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset" (emphasis mine). Warning users of cell phones to stay away from electromagnetic fields but simultaneously recommending them to use wireless headsets is absurd. How does he think wireless headsets operate that avoid electromagnetic fields?
Bruce on 07.25.08 @ 11:27 AM CST [link] [1 Comment]
In the light of the new copyright bill introduced in Canada yesterday, I had this thought:
Copyright has frequently been described as an incentive for creators to produce new works. If that is true, why does copy protection on a work extend for decades after the death of the creator (70 years in USA, 50 years in Canada)? What possible incentive could that be after the creator is dead?
Bruce on 06.13.08 @ 07:35 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
The Saskatoon StarPhoenix opinion column has observed that a vacuum in federal politics leaves the provinces fighting to fill in. Somehow this has been misconstrued as a bad thing.
While apparently "most federations recognize that the best way to attack such large issues ... is for the federal government to take the leadership and direct policy", this is really not as effective as it sounds. There are innumerable instances where federal policies have benefited one group only to completely cheat everybody else. Since the federal government is effectively constrained to "one size fits all" type policies, this will always be the case.
For comparison, let's look at some other large issues where the federal government took leadership and directed policy. First up, the energy crisis of the 1970s. The result of the federal government's "leadership" was the National Energy Program, a name that is still cursed nearly universally in western Canada.
What about the problem of disparities between so-called have and have-not provinces? That is supposedly solved by another federal system, the equalization program that punishes successful economies and reduces motivation for poor and underachieving economies. It has been the cause of all kinds of fighting, even to the point of near lawsuits by the provinces against the federal government, a rather ludicrous prospect.
It is true, as they say, that the provinces have "disparate interests". That is precisely why the provinces should be left to solve the problem in their own way rather than having the federal government dictate their choices. In fact, given the tension between the cities within each province, having the provincial government dictate solutions to the cities may even be too large a division. Having lived in both cities, there are problems for which Regina and Saskatoon would have offered completely different solutions if the provincial or federal governments had not made their decision for them.
Truly, decisions are best made as locally as possible to provide the best results for the disparate people groups we have in Canada.
Bruce on 06.11.08 @ 06:58 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
In the news today, Republican John McCain is quoted as saying oil companies should return some profits to consumers.
What on earth for? By definition, consumers are the ones that are buying the oil companies' products. Also by definition, said consumers have already profited by buying the products. We have made the decision that the products are more valuable to us than other uses of the money, and so are better off for purchasing the products. That's profit.
See, there are only a handful of people in the world who could possibly produce the kinds of products that oil companies produce on their own. Even then, they would have to purchase billions of dollars of equipment, land rights, employees, and so on. For all the rest of us, we benefit from the incredible investment these companies have made in offering us a valuable product.
In fact, given all the competition in the oil product market, these products are being offered at razor thin margins. John Gormley, a local talk show host, calculated all the costs involved in delivering gasoline to the pumps. Despite all kinds of complaints that we are being gouged, or that oil companies are colluding to charge us more, the end number he comes up with is within a few pennies of the actual price at the pump.
No, companies are only obligated to return their monetary profits to those people who have shared in the risks they take. That would be the investors that have given the companies their money to use. That's right, the same shareholders that they already return profits to. Thanks to the wonders of modern investing, pretty near everybody who owns shares in a mutual fund probably is an effective shareholder in at least one oil company.
So, we can all profit from companies by sharing in their risk. Or we can profit by purchasing their products that we value. Either way, we can profit from companies without those companies being coerced to do something so counterproductive as what McCain is suggesting.
Bruce on 06.11.08 @ 06:09 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Brad McKaig, spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 1975 is quoted in a story in today's newspaper as saying:
We're worried about members reading propaganda on the web or elsewhere and then casting a ballot
Two Saskatoon stores are asking city council for permission to stay open 24 hours a day for some days during Christmas. Sarah Maunder writes that there is "Little to gain by extending shopping hours even more". She says that "help-wanted signs are everywhere" but that "employees need to prove their dedication in order to be guaranteed shifts".
Well, Sarah, fortunately it can't work both ways. If help wanted signs are everywhere (and they really are), then there really is no risk in losing your job because the employers are so desperate to keep workers. Even if you do, there's always other jobs you can go to because there are so many looking for employees. But if employees are being made to prove their dedication, then there must be a serious risk of them not getting another job.
I say let the people decide. If the stores stay open and lose money, they won't be likely to do it again. If they make money, it means enough people decided that they wanted to shop during the extended hours. Either way there is little to lose and potential for a gain in convenience.
Bruce on 10.16.07 @ 11:10 AM CST [link] [No Comments]
You can be sure a government election is coming when the announcement coming out of the government offices start to resemble a snowfall. In light of the Saskatchewan elections that were announced recently, I did a few searches for all the announcements I could find that were tied to money coming from the provincial government. I knew there had been quite a number, but I was somewhat dismayed at just how many I could find.
Bruce on 10.15.07 @ 05:22 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
The headline of the article reads "NDP warns government of election", but the foul comes in this quote from NDP Leader Jack Layton:
[Prime Minister] Harper used to believe in democracy. He used to believe in accountability. ... Now he believes in doing what the Liberals did: pile up the money in surprise surpluses, and pay down the debt without any consultation with Canadians about their priorities.
...because she did have something to fear, in the form of an ex-boyfriend using US Department of Homeland Security databases to stalk her and her family. This proves the point I made in a previous post: you don't have to be "doing something wrong" to have reason to fear unilateral privacy invasions.
The only good news in this story is that the perp got caught. How many others don't?
Bruce on 09.28.07 @ 12:43 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
It occurred to me yesterday that the type of interconnects used to attach devices to computers has come full circle. This left me wondering how much further the current trend is going to go.
Many of the earliest devices were attached to computers using various serial cables. Printers, terminals, and drives mostly started life as having some kind of serial interconnect. RS-232 (used with modems and older printers), EIA-422, ST-506 (used with the first PC hard drives), and ESDI (a successor to the ST-506 interface) were all serial interconnects.
Slowly, as the demand for higher bandwidth grew, those interconnects started moving to wider and wider parallel buses. ATA (formerly known as IDE, now known as PATA) for hard drives, SCSI for drives and other bulk data devices, and the parallel port for printers were the main examples of this on PCs. For many years these interfaces were clocked incrementally faster, and in some cases the buses grew wider as well.
Internally, where device attachment largely started with parallel connections, the same trend has been happening, with the ISA bus starting at 8 bits, then moving to 16, and then to 32 bits with EISA, MCA, VESA, PCI, and AGP. The PCI bus later developed a 64-bit variant known as PCI-X, and the speeds clocked higher as well.
However, those parallel interconnects have hit a brick wall, and it appears that they will not be back any time soon. As data transfer speeds increase, it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure that all the data on a parallel bus is valid at the same time. This necessitates correspondingly more complex and expensive circuitry to drive such a bus. When combined with the ability for engineers to build much faster circuitry, it has become much more effective to built interfaces based on serial mechanisms instead of parallel ones.
So, all major PC devices have now moved to serial connections of one form or another. FireWire is used for many digital media devices, SATA and SAS are used for storage drives, and USB is used for just about everything. Even the internal PCI bus has moved to a serial mechanism with PCIe. Even though a PCIe bus may transfer multiple bits simultaneously, it is physically composed of multiple serial "lanes" which are independently self-clocked.
This leads me to my question. All of the replaceable components on PCs, both externally and internally, have moved to serial interconnects except for two: RAM and CPUs. Admittedly, these two devices have the highest bandwidth requirements of all of the devices, so the technological constraints are higher. However, I still wonder. Are serial-attached CPUs as inevitable as all the other serial interconnects?
Bruce on 07.04.07 @ 12:42 PM CST [link] [2 Comments]
There are two clear and present dangers to liberty in America. One is known as the Left, and the other is known as the Right.
Great article that says what I've been thinking for some time -- the majority of politics in America (and much of Canada) is opposed to liberty.
Bruce on 06.11.07 @ 11:56 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Apparently, Al Gore is saying that our democracy is being ruined by television. The link points to the next item on the TV agenda, a report on Pitt and Jolie at Cannes, as the irony.
Really, Al Gore is the irony himself for criticizing others for their use of television to ruin democracy. That's rather rich coming from somebody who is spending so much time on TV to promote his highly political docudrama and even apparently sold his vote for more speech time.
Bruce on 05.30.07 @ 02:54 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]
Jack Layton, leader of the federal NDP is reported to be pushing the government for "fair trade". What kind of fair trade would that be, Jack?
The federal government must enact strategies to ensure Canadian products are traded fairly on an international market, he said.
"If Korea wants to sell cars here, they need to take ours."
It's a perrenial complaint, and completely understandable. The companies charge us too much for gasoline. The cry "They're gouging us! is heard. The most common complaint is how prices seem to spike quickly when crude oil prices go up, but drop slowly when they go down.
Unfortunately, the facts aren't nearly so convenient. I did some checking on GasBuddy.com and came up with the following chart produced from their historical price charts:
This chart shows the price of gas in Saskatoon SK (where I live) along with the Canadian average price and the market price of crude oil over the last 24 months. The chart does show that there is sometimes a delay between the price of crude dropping and the street price of gasoline dropping, although that delay appears to be fairly short. It also shows a similar delay between prices going up. Alltogether, it shows that there is a very strong correlation both ways.
Huh.
Another complaint is how Canadians pay so much more for gasoline, even after taxes are taken into account. Again, the facts fail to back up this argument. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation put out a report in 2005 called the "Gas Tax Honesty Campaign" (PDF). While most of the report details how poorly the tax collected on gasoline is being spent, page 26 compares the prices of gasoline in Canada to that in the USA, before and after taxes. The before taxes line in their chart is very close (within 10% at all points). Exxon Mobil also produced this op-ed (PDF) which includes a chart showing the price of gasoline around the globe in 2005, before and after taxes. Again, the before tax prices varies very little across the globe.
Huh again.
Then there's the matter of the use of the term "gouging". According to dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster, this term means "to engage in swindling, overcharging, or the like". I do not think that we are being swindled (meaning defrauded), and overcharging implies there is a price that they should be charging. This seems to imply there is a moral price at which their profit could be considered acceptable.
Consider this however: we keep buying. The demand for gasoline is highly elastic with relation to its price. This means that when the price goes down, we don't buy much more gas, and when the price goes up, we don't buy less gas. Sure, when the price goes up we may delay buying gas, but we still buy it, because we just can't stop driving. If we keep buying, what incentive do they have to keep prices low? It's not like they're in the business as a game for play money.
Yes, these companies are in the business to make real money. These are public companies that have a explicit reponsibility to the shareholders that help to fund the company to make the most money they can. It is important to realize that "shareholders" includes nearly all of us who own shares in mutual funds, who in turn typically depend on these investments to return a good profit so as to provide for our retirement.
Bruce on 04.10.07 @ 05:59 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Recently, somebody pointed out a survey (warning: PDF) by The Strategic Council and sponsored by The Globe and Mail and CTV. The results of the poll seem to me to be fairly neutral, with most sides being able to find something to point at as positive. There is a leaning that favours the party that is currently in power, which is normal.
It's not the results that were of real interest to me, though. One of the questions caught my eye as having the appearance of push polling. I'm not sure this kind of push was even realized when the question was posed, given the political bias of the sponsors of the poll.
The question was this: "Which one of the political parties do you think is best able to manage the economy?" (page 11)
This question is highly leading, with a lot of assumed answers preceding it. Does the economy need to be "managed"? Does government management add value to the economy? Does any government do a good job of managing economy?
Governments "manage" their economies much in the same way as boulders "manage" a river. Since governments do not and can not create value by themselves, they can only operate by taking value out of their economies. The "management" they provide usually amounts to obstacles and impediments against one form of activity or another, much as boulders provide impediments to the flow of a river. Put in enough boulders, and the result is the river slowing down to a trickle, and the plants the river feeds will die.
There's another side to that too. Rivers don't just trickle between boulders put in their paths. Given enough obstacles, they will start to flow around the obstacles, making new paths and streams, rendering the obstacles ineffective once again and washing out unexpected areas. In much the same way, virtually everything done to "manage" an economy has unintended consequences that spill over into other areas. People will try to route around impediments to their economic goals through tax evasion, black markets, and other illegal activities. Government incentives and impediments will also have unintended consequences, like some of the mass shifts of companies into income trusts to avoid taxes.
Sadly, this poll did not appear have an answer that is the most accurate: "None of them."
Bruce on 03.05.07 @ 01:12 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Great news! Software developers are now obsolete! A company called Attunity has developed a platform called InFocus "which will enable customers to build their own applications".
Yawn.
Too bad this promise has been repeated about every 5 years since the introduction of FORTRAN and BASIC (and maybe earlier). While some aspects of software development can be made easier, there will always remain some inherent complexity which cannot be reduced. As such software development will always require experts, at least to do anything remotely novel.
Bruce on 02.12.07 @ 11:17 AM CST [link] [1 Comment]
It's rather refreshing to hear that CSIS (Canada's intelligence agency) has seen the light (or at least a glimmer of it) on the issue of excessive secrecy. A notable quote: "Over-reaction to terrorism, it should be remembered, is a fundamental objective of most terrorists in history. We should not accommodate their goals in this regard."
Exactly!
Update: I emailed this story to Bruce Schneier, and apparently he agrees.
Bruce on 01.29.07 @ 05:18 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
When discussing the necessity of war, many have pointed to the atrocities of Hitler as the ultimate example. If Hitler had not been stopped by war, what would have happened to the world as we know it?
This line of reasoning completely ignores the factors that propelled Hitler into a place of influence in the first place. Hitler took power at the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1933 after the collapse of the Weimar Republic in Germany caused at least in part by the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. Without this treaty, it is unlikely that the necessary conditions (popular resentment against outside nations, etc) would have existed.
That treaty, in turn, was punishment for another war that Germany got involved in as a result of a combination of factors, most notably its agressive arms race against Great Britain and the imperial nature of the governments involved. Although the factors that led to WWI were more complex than just these two, without them the war would likely not have happened.
So to summarize, imperial agression led to war led to resentment figureheaded by Hitler led to another war. And this is used as an example of why we should preemptively start more wars and cause more resentment? It just doesn't work that way.
Bruce on 01.05.07 @ 06:27 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
Following up my own post involving debt reduction, I've had another thought to add. Well, actually I've had several more thoughts, this is just the only one I've remembered to write down so far.
In his letter, Alex Thumm said:
Parents don't cut piano lessons or quality of food for their children so they can pay off their line of credit.