baz.com - Brett Thomas' Blog tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark/1 2008-11-03T03:44:08Z Writings and rantings on things Interesting. Or Annoying. Movable Type 3.34 2008 California, County of San Mateo and City of San Carlos Propositions tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.58 2008-11-03T02:06:00Z 2008-11-03T03:44:08Z As is my wont, I spent (with my wife's help) a lot of time thinking about the propositions we have to vote on, this year. Only a couple of these were completely obvious to me right out the gate, and... NO: 1A - SAFE, RELIABLE HIGH-SPEED PASSENGER TRAIN BOND ACT I'd love to see a high-speed bullet train to Los Angelas, I really would. Call me crazy in thinking that right now isn't a good time to borrow billions of dollars to do it. YES: 2 - STANDARDS FOR CONFINING FARM ANIMALS. INITIATIVE STATUTE Some may find it surprising that a libertarian like me is voting "yes" on this one. My wife was an aggie major at Cornell, so she's been inside these farms. Most of what the proposition ads highlight are actually irrelevant, for a number of reasons. The primary effect of this proposition would be to take chickens that lay eggs, which are currently confined six-to-a-very-small-cage and make them instead be confined at something like two-to-a-very-small-cage. The law seems to us to be surprisingly well-crafted; it does not, in fact, outlaw most reasonable farming practices. I do feel that animal cruelty is an important moral issue. Megan Mcardle, who is now a vegan, wrote last year:
...I'm essentially an aggregate utilitarian: I think that as long as [animals'] lives are worth living, it is a positive good to [raise them to] eat them. It is hard, to be sure, to determine what a chicken considers "the good life". However, I'm pretty sure that industrial farming conditions do not constitute a life worth living; if those chickens had the cognitive and mechanical capacity to commit suicide, they would.
This is my position as well. Seeing that Prop 2 seems to be well-crafted to attack specifically this issue, I am supporting it. NO: 3 - CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL BOND ACT. GRANT PROGRAM. INITIATIVE STATUTE In the state of California, bond acts get qualified for one of two reasons - either the legislature approves them, in which case they have to ask us to fund the bonds, or, groups can come up with their own acts without any consideration by the legislature of whether there is a need. One of the most egregious misuses of the proposition system has been for construction interests to push bond acts for popular-sounding projects in hope that they'll receive the money spent. I'm unclear who's behind this initiative - construction groups, hospitals themselves, or even the parents of sick children. Regardless, this is a case of an interested group trying to get us to borrow money and spend it on them. The legislature didn't vote on this proposal. My general policy on bond issues is to vote "no", especially now, and especially on items that weren't vetted by the legislature, to begin with. NO: 4 - WAITING PERIOD AND PARENTAL NOTIFICATION BEFORE TERMINATION OF MINOR'S PREGNANCY The existence of fundamentalists of all faiths make a "no" vote on this one pretty obvious to me. YES: 5 - NONVIOLENT DRUG OFFENSES. SENTENCING, PAROLE AND REHABILITATION This one was hard for me. The other terrible abuse we've seen of the proposition system has been to "earmark" some amount of the general budget for specific policy outcomes. Because we've been doing this for decades, I think it's quite possible we're now looking at a system where having a balanced budget in California would actually be illegal. It's certainly impractical. However, I also believe that the greatest moral outrage our country perpetrates on a daily basis is the War on Drugs. It is my deepest hope that all the Democrats outraged at the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo and the perceived loss of civil liberties under George W. Bush will transfer that anger and hatred to what we do, every day, to our own citizens in order to prevent them from doing things that harm only themselves. Of course, I'm not optimistic. In any event, as much as I am generally opposed to "earmarks" of this nature, it is very clear that the politicians in Sacramento are too afraid of being seen "soft on crime" to make rational decisions, here. This proposition, while far from perfect, would try to shunt non-violent drug offenders into a treatment and rehabilitation program, instead of sending them to prison in order to shut off any future job opportunities and teach them how to be real criminals. In the end, I feel I have to hold my nose at the funding methods and vote "Yes" on 5. NO: 6 - POLICE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT FUNDING This is an example of the type of earmarking I'm clearly against. This earmarks nearly a billion dollars - helpfully indexed to inflation to keep rising in the future - for "police, sheriffs, district attorneys, adult probation, jails and juvenile probation facilities". It also "Makes approximately 30 revisions to California criminal law, many of which cover gang-related offenses. Revisions create multiple new crimes and additional penalties, some with the potential for new life sentences". Because, you know, we just need to have more things illegal and put more people in jail for longer. NO: 7 - RENEWABLE ENERGY GENERATION This requires that, by 2025, 50% of the power generated in California must come from "renewable" sources. Note that nuclear does not count as "renewable" (which, honestly, it isn't, but that's not really relevant to anything). This is just the sort of ham-handed top-down control we tend to regret later. If this passes, no doubt, the same people who voted for it will be screaming at the governor about how expensive their electric bills are. I'll also note that many leading environmental groups are opposing this as being poorly drafted. Frankly, anyone who is concerned in any way about global warming should vote no; I consider fundamentally unserious any person who thinks that carbon dioxide is a significant cause of rising temperatures and yet does not also support significant nuclear electrical generation. NO: 8 - ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY If you feel otherwise, don't argue with me, because I'll probably end up yelling at you. This is the closest thing to the civil rights battle of the 1960s our generation will (hopefully) ever see. While I try very hard not to take rational discourse off the table, in my opinion, if you support this measure, you are simply not a member of civilized society. NO: 9 - CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. VICTIMS' RIGHTS. PAROLE Makes it easier for victims to keep the criminals that wronged them in prison, longer. There have been a few cases of people getting paroled who shouldn't have. However, in general, I continue to think that the thing we're not missing in this state is tools to keep people locked up long enough. NO: 10 - ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES AND RENEWABLE ENERGY This would borrow $5 billion to pay people rebates to buy Priuses (in effect, and do some research). I think this would be a bad idea at any time, it's an especially bad idea when we're already billions in the hole. YES: 11 - REDISTRICTING I continue to consider gerrymandering to be one of the greatest threats The Republic has ever faced. Making the legislature do things that are in our interest, and against theirs, should be what the proposition system is all about. This proposition's loss in 2006 cut off hopes in the proposition system for me. I have no idea if it'll pass, or not, but if it did, it would go a long way to convincing me that maybe all this is worth it. This and 8 were the two I knew how I wanted to vote before I read anything. NO: 12 - VETERANS' BOND ACT OF 2008 This borrows a billion dollars to lend it to veterans to buy houses and farms with. As much as I support the sacrifices our men and women in uniform make, I continue to think that spending a billion dollars we don't have right now is an especially bad idea. NO: San Mateo Q - 8% tax on parking providers NO: San Mateo R - 2.5% tax on rental car companies San Mateo has been running a budget deficit for a while. This is an attempt to close the gap. The proponents try to claim that this deficit has been because of state spending cuts, but it's clear that San Mateo has been spending more money than they get for a long time, now. Since 2005, revenues have gone up 3% per year, while expenditures have gone up 8.5% per year. We need to cut spending, not raise taxes, here. YES: San Carlos S - +$75 parcel tax for San Carlos schools San Carlos, similarly, has been running a structural deficit for a while. Since the unfortunate proposition in 2000 to allow education bonds with a simple majority (rather then 60% majority), they have also come to us, hat-in-hand, for hundreds of millions in bonds, every two years. I'd vowed that, if they did it again, I'd vote "no". This time, however, they have come to us with a tax increase. In part, this actually is to offset lower educational spending by the state. In general, I prefer that these things be funded, locally, and with taxes and not bonds, so I'm supporting this measure. ]]> Flabbergasted tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.57 2008-10-07T05:56:30Z 2008-10-07T07:00:30Z I've known for some time that things aren't working the way people were thinking. I sadly didn't blog about it - in no small part because I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on - but I know... Bossa Nova, which I am not nearly cool enough to hang out in, but has delicious food. We definitely went to a baseball game, afterwards - I clearly remember being a bit embarrassed about my Giants gear in such a hip establishment, and I know it was a weekend day, with a fairly rare weekend night game. Anyway, at lunch, Jeff commented on a colleague from Europe coming to the US and going on a shopping spree because the dollar was so cheap. I'd been vaguely aware the Euro was up on the dollar, but I hadn't realized how much so. I remember being aghast at the idea that, say, a bellhop in London's work moving bags was worth, apparently, so much more than the work of New York bellhop's. Even taking into account things like trade imbalances, it just didn't make any sense to me that the same amount of labor in Europe was apparently worth more than the same labor in the US. I remember at the end of the day just shaking my head and saying, "there's something going on here that people don't understand." Of course, the Euro was worth $.74 at the end of June, that year - it dropped further from there, hitting its nadir in April of 2008 at $.625. I was baffled why people thought the Euro (and European companies) were a better investment than those here, in the US, given that I believe the US's policies are generally more pro-growth. You can argue that the net trade-off for the average American is worse than for the average European, but I think it's difficult to argue that European companies are going to, on average, grow faster than American ones, or that European GDP will. The good news (for me) is that it has recently turned around. The dollar is back to being worth about what it was in June of '07, as the financial contagion continues to spread. I say good news, because I'm long on the dollar - I pretty much have to be, since I live here. Most of my net worth is tied up in Silicon Valley real estate and a private, US company. If I measure my net worth in, say, Fiats, or oil I've actually had my net worth go up pretty well in the past few months, simply by virtue of currency exchange rates changing. The bad news is that I mostly still don't understand what's going on, and I suspect that nobody does. I saw the oil bubble coming - I was advising my brothers to sell oil a good six months ago. But, the current financial crisis in Europe I didn't see coming. I thought the dollar was too low against the Euro, but it at the same time doesn't make sense that, the more we learn about the US crisis, the faster people buy dollars. The best guess I have right now is that professionals are finally starting to understand that they don't understand. The scope of the crisis in the US, I hope, is mostly known - but what's going on in Europe is even less known. Iceland appears to have bailed out a bank with assets of six times their GDP, and hence literally nationalized the banking risk. Runs (on currencies, banks or any securities) become self-fulfilling prophecies as people panic. I remain optimistic that this will turn itself around. This is probably just the darkest part, before the dawn. The fact that no one seems to really understand anything, or be able to predict the next problem, does not give me hope. ]]> Why Hello There, What a Cute Little Clause You Are! How Did You Get In There? tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.56 2008-10-02T04:53:35Z 2008-10-06T18:14:55Z Paulson's original proposal was three pages. When it was defeated in The House, it was 102. Now, it's 451 pages (thanks to the Wall Street Journal for the full text). On page 88, there is Section 131, "AUTHORITY TO SUSPEND... 451 pages (thanks to the Wall Street Journal for the full text). On page 88, there is Section 131, "AUTHORITY TO SUSPEND MARK-TO-MARKET ACCOUNTING."
The Securities and Exchange Commission shall have the authority under the securities laws...to suspend, by rule, regulation, or order, the application of Statement Number 157 of the Financial Accounting Standards Board [FASB] for any issuer...or with respect to any class or category of transaction if the Commission determines that is necessary or appropriate in the public interest and is consistent with the protection of investors.
I've elided various parentheticals talking about US Code sections. FASB is Statement Number 157, "Fair Value Measurements", which describes how mark-to-market works from an accounting standard perspective. Below it is Section 132 (surprise!), "STUDY ON MARK-TO-MARKET ACCOUNTING", which directs the SEC to conduct a study on mark-to-market, and report back to Congress within 90 days. The study is to attempt to determine if such accounting hurts banks, if it helped cause this crisis, and what we might use as a replacement. I'm sure the rest of it is riveting reading - it starts with the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which it helpfully points out spells "TARP". I guess we'll use it to temporarily cover our Really Outrageous Overwhelming Failure. I am also sure that very few people will have finished reading it by the time it passes. However, the inclusion of at least the mechanism to suspend mark-to-market shows some hope that perhaps some understanding of underlying causes is beginning to seep in. Mr. Paulson, for one still (as far as we can tell) is a fan of the accounting measure - as recently as July, he said "I think it’s hard to run a financial institution if you don’t have the discipline which requires you to mark securities to market." Perhaps he's changed his mind, or perhaps the near future will, and perhaps the SEC thinks otherwise, in any case. It's nice to see they'll have the choice, anyway (if this measure passes, of course...) ]]> The Most Interesting Things Don't Rate Headlines tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.55 2008-10-01T16:59:49Z 2008-10-01T17:16:18Z The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the new, compromise "don't call it a bailout" bill is moving its way through the Senate. It focuses on the proposal that FDIC deposit insurance be raised from $100,000 to $250,000... Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the new, compromise "don't call it a bailout" bill is moving its way through the Senate. It focuses on the proposal that FDIC deposit insurance be raised from $100,000 to $250,000 in an attempt to keep the modestly wealthy from causing a run on already undercapitalized banks. There is a little bit of complexity, there - will they ever be able to get the rates back down, when the crisis is over? Will they be able to get the extra insurance premiums out of already cash-strapped banks? But, overall, that proposal makes sense to me. However, more interesting, and that I had not heard reported elsewhere, is that the SEC on Tuesday issued guidance on the applicability of "mark to market" accounting for assets that have no useful market at the moment. I haven't blogged about this, specifically, but it's my personal belief that the requirement of "mark to market" on illiquid and untraded items (such as Mortgage-Backed Securities) have been a major player in bank illiquidity and subsequent insolvency. From the Journal:
The SEC said on Tuesday that in some circumstances it might make more sense to judge assets not on what the market will bear, but on their intrinsic value -- for example, if they're from a highly respected company that is unlikely to default.
Like, say, Bear Stearns? Still, any relief from the current cycle of revaluing undertraded items, leading to more revaluing is welcome. Further, the article states that one of the items being debated for the new, revised bill, is a suspension of the "mark to market" rule, altogether. No more details are given - I can't imagine they'd suspend it entirely - but it's nice to see Congress and the SEC at finally starting to think about something that has been clearly a big contributor to the ongoing crisis. ]]> Professor Posner's Comment tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.54 2008-10-01T03:00:23Z 2008-10-01T16:59:32Z I loved Eric Posner's comment on the bailout process: Here's a recap. Paulson sought to give Treasury the power to buy mortgage-related assets. A power grab!, said the critics. So congressional Democrats sought to give Treasury the power to buy... comment on the bailout process:
Here's a recap. Paulson sought to give Treasury the power to buy mortgage-related assets. A power grab!, said the critics. So congressional Democrats sought to give Treasury the power to buy mortgage-related assets, non-mortgage-related assets, and equity interests, and to regulate executive pay. Socialism!, said the congressional Republicans. So the final bill gives Treasury the power to buy mortgage-related assets, non-mortgage-related assets, and equity interests, and to regulate executive pay, and to issue insurance to distressed institutions. Madisonian deliberation at its finest!
As Neal Stephenson notes in his most recent book, "it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all." ]]> A Third Choice, and a Fourth... tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.53 2008-10-01T02:28:37Z 2008-10-01T16:53:04Z Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin and Eric Posner have been having a spirited debate about the recent failure of the "Paulson Plan" to pass Congress. Prof. Somin is of the opinion that yesterday's drop in the markets provides... Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin and Eric Posner have been having a spirited debate about the recent failure of the "Paulson Plan" to pass Congress. Prof. Somin is of the opinion that yesterday's drop in the markets provides no information about the intrinsic value of such a bailout - Paulson proposed to transfer lots of money from taxpayers to shareholders: that failed; shareholders were disappointed. Prof. Posner believes, instead, that the markets fell because the plan was good for everyone (taxpayers and shareholders) and that, consequently, when it failed, the markets were signaling their overall fear of the future, not their specific fear that they'll be unable to rob taxpayers. David Post weighs in with his opinion that the information in the market is not sufficient to tell the two apart:
I don't see any way to distinguish between those two hypotheses without asking a (large) number of yesterday's traders what they had in their heads, and why they made the trades they made (and even that, of course, is deeply problematical, given the enormous difficulties of getting any reliable information from surveys of that kind).
His point here, of course, is good. In the best of circumstances, it's impossible to tell what the market "means" by its movement - if such a question has any validity, at all. But, I think, there are at least two other hypotheses that can't be ruled out with this data. First, it's quite possible that these movements are largely random. People are making individual decisions not based entirely upon news, but more upon other conditions in their portfolios, expectations of what everyone else is going to do, raw emotions. If these are the causes, no conclusion may be drawn, in any case. Second, investors abhor risk that they know that they don't understand. When a company announces that it's going to restate previous earnings, it often causes a drop in the stock well out of proportion to the eventual restatement. It reminds investors that they really have no idea of the actual underlying information about this security, and causes them to sell. A similar problem is the event that started this whole mess - it turned out that subprime mortgages that were thought to have a pretty low default rate (say, 4%) will have a larger default rate. How much larger? No one knows. It's hard to imagine that, even in a Great Depression scenario, it'll be more than 20% (and that is really in an unmitigated and highly unlikely disaster). When investors realized they had no idea what the underlying risk of default was, they fled these investments, causing a precipitous drop in price, far beyond even the worst estimates of the actual losses. It is not unheard of for companies to rise on bad news - because the uncertainty about their fate has been eliminated. It is quite possible that the market had been expecting that the Paulson Plan would pass for the past week. It's also possible that the consensus was that it was worth than nothing - but, that consensus was priced into the securities, already. When Congress failed to pass the Paulson Plan, it raised the specter that something even worse would happen, and this possibility is what the markets were responding to. As Prof. Post notes, we have no way to distinguish between any of these hypotheses. I thought it was worth noting, though, that there is even an argument that the market went down because it thinks the Paulson Plan that didn't pass is worse than doing nothing. Of course, the market went up, today: What does that tell us of the market consensus of what we should do? ]]> "The Bailout" (or, "I Have To Get This Off My Chest") tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.52 2008-09-21T20:28:09Z 2008-09-21T22:20:17Z I gave up, by conscious decision, being angry at the government about a decade ago. My liberal friends become outraged at the latest injustice (civil liberties, The Republican War on Science, crony capitalism), and my response is a yawn. Most... really angry for the rest of my life, or just figure that things have been basically stumbling along in our modern system for about the last four score years, and hopefully they'd do so for the next. And, probably, they will. But, the recent government response to the "economic crisis" has really raised my ire, again. To be clear: This bailout is no less the Republican party's fault than it is the Democrat's. It's Paulson's plan, but the Congressional Democrats think they're doing the Right Thing for the economy, and the country. Charles Schumer described Paulson's briefing as making him "gulp". Chris Dowd said this is "one of those rare moments [of] Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly." My opinion has been for some time that "bipartisanship" is when both parties decide to work together to spend your money. At best - if it does what the government plans - it will result in the government buying assets at more than anyone else is willing to pay for them. That's basically definitional - if someone else was willing to pay more, the companies involved would perform those transactions. The Treasury department is, of course, describing what they're willing to pay as "fair market prices", which Yves Smith very accurately describes as Orwellian double-speak for "above market prices". As well, all the news stories desrcribing the "700 Billion Dollar Bailout" are wrong - we have no idea what this will cost. The Treasury Secretary and The Fed have the authority to purchase assets with up to $700 Billion. Imagine, though - as hard as this is to picture - that what they're talking about buying are banks with as-yet unknown liabilities. "Liabilities" here being accounting-speak for "money they are owed but may never get paid". The market says: "Firm X is owed $200B by borrowers of unknown quality. They also owe other firms $100B in other obligations. We have no idea what percentage of what they're owed they're going to get - so, we'll assume...say, 25%, and value the firm at -$50B, net of their obligations (i.e., they're bankrupt)." The government is going to say, "No, no, it must be worth more than that...we'll pay $50B." Then, it turns out that the market was right, and "asset" the government just paid $50B for is worth $50B in income, but owes $200B to others. If that "extra" $150B exceeds the $700B, do we have any reason to think that the Federal Government will simply default? Doubtless, if they did, the long-term cost to the credit of the nation would be higher than simply paying. Of course, the old libertarian complaint that we're taxing "Grandma" to save the losses of a bunch of rich bankers is no longer true. In fact, progressives can't honestly make this complaint, anymore. The top earners underwrite most of the Federal budget. In effect, we're taxing rich non-bankers to pay rich bankers (and Grandma, via Social Security). Perhaps, maybe, the silver lining is that leftish folks are starting to question whether giving government this kind of power is a good idea in the first place, since they always seem to need to use it. Matt Yglesias (a leftish blogger) notes:
It'd be one thing for a bunch of conservative politicians to ram a terrible policy through. Then we could say "well, if some progressives win the next election things will be different." But if this comes through an allegedly progressive congress then the whole enterprise starts looking pretty hollow.
Yeah, exactly, and that's why I've had a lot of trouble getting very exercised at the Bush administration: I've always known the Kerry administration would've been substantively just as bad. Tyler Cowen (a libertarianish economist) is even losing faith in the market:
[T]here are a number of enterprises -- not just Matt's -- which are looking pretty hollow these days. And I don't just mean banks. You can blame lots of the crisis on government -- more than most people think -- but at the end of the day it is hard to escape the conclusion that markets simply have performed horribly in a number of important regards.
I suppose that depends on what one wants of markets. Were the markets supposed to prevent bad outcomes? Or merely signal through prices that things were risky? It's very arguable that markets, in fact, priced the risk adequately. A handful of firms have had bad outcomes, but now the government is going to come in and buy the assets at their "fair market value". This naturally leads us to "moral hazard" - that bankers make risky bets, knowing they get to keep the profits and government gets to keep the losses. The markets, I think, will accurately (over) value firms that have a now explicit government guarantee. The bankers, of course, are now incented to hold out for a better price from the government. That's their job. In theory, the government's job is to watch out for us. We all know that isn't going to happen, though. Since we know (from places like the USSR) that trying to make the bankers act in our interest doesn't work, the only alternative I see is to stop trusting the regulators. But, we all know that isn't going to happen, either. ]]> AIG, Fannie, Freddie, etc., etc., etc... tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.51 2008-09-18T02:48:37Z 2008-09-18T02:53:48Z Socialism without the jobs...... Socialism without the jobs... Amazing tag:www.baz.com,2008:/quark//1.47 2008-02-14T04:18:37Z 2008-02-14T04:31:31Z A professor was recently lamenting the sartorial sins of his fellows, in a pompus article about how educators should dress better. Leaving aside the wisdom of such a proposal, the following leapt out at me: Here's a draft Uniform Uniform... pompus article about how educators should dress better. Leaving aside the wisdom of such a proposal, the following leapt out at me:
Here's a draft Uniform Uniform Code: Faculty members shall, when on college grounds or on college business, dress in a way that would not embarrass their mothers, unless their mothers are under age 50 and are therefore likely to be immune to embarrassment from scruffy dressing, in which case faculty members shall dress in a way that would not embarrass my mother. That's it. Brevity works.
"Brevity works" he says, after using sixty-five words to elucidate a rule that could be expressed as "Faculty members shall dress in a way that would not embarrass my mother." If you're feeling charitable, you could add "...when on college business." Of course, his rule is more flexible - if your Mom is 51 and thinks teaching in a thong is OK, you've got a free pass! But, somehow, I don't think that was his intent. His solution is wordy and doesn't get the result he wants!]]> But For the Grace of God... tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.46 2007-10-30T12:01:50Z 2007-10-30T18:40:52Z About two and half years ago (I think - it seems to me it was just as Vindicia moved into its current office, which would've been then) I got a call from a recruiter. He was looking for someone to... an extended anti-music-industry rant, in which declares he's done with the DRM crap Yahoo! Music has been shoving down customers' throats:
I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.
The start of this rant is an overview of the digital music history - one which does not touch on GoodNoise, which was selling unencumbered MP3s for $.99 in 1998, nor the company it became, EMusic, which was selling subscriptions for $9.99, again, to unencumbered MP3s in 2000. Ian just tried Amazon's new digital download service, which is unencumbered, as well. It beats GoodNoise's offering by having the content of two major labels - something were never thought it would take nine years to convince them was inevitable. Ian wonders what took so long: "But now, eight years later, Amazon's finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that's simple and works with any device... PRAISE JESUS. It only took 8 years." Well, to some of us, it was obvious in 1998, but, I'm glad everyone else is finally coming around. Ian's bottom line is right on, though: "Convenience wins, hubris loses." Oh, and that recruiter - I had a vision pop in my head of endlessly trying to convince major labels, yet again that they should drop DRM because it was killing their sales while not preventing piracy. I told him, "There's not enough money." He was taken aback. "We're Yahoo! It's never been a problem, before." "No," I explained, "I didn't say you don't have enough money. I said there isn't enough." ]]> Lime Steak tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.44 2007-10-29T20:05:55Z 2007-10-29T14:03:08Z Made this the other day after I'd had it at my friend, Jeff's. It's pretty easy. The recipe suggests tri-tip; I did flank steak and it was marvelous. I did not try the tomato relish with it. I'm not a... this the other day after I'd had it at my friend, Jeff's. It's pretty easy. The recipe suggests tri-tip; I did flank steak and it was marvelous. I did not try the tomato relish with it. I'm not a big fan of cilantro, but wasn't able to detect it in the final product. Definitely recommend it as a quick way to make a Mexicany steak. ]]> Just installed Leopard... tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.45 2007-10-29T18:06:03Z 2007-10-29T18:09:43Z Had two panics, already. In Apple's defense, that's the first time I've seen a panic, ever, but, still. Not the best experience, so far. Spaces are nice - work a lot better than the old Virtue Desktops, which were always... ever, but, still. Not the best experience, so far. Spaces are nice - work a lot better than the old Virtue Desktops, which were always a bit of a hack. And, I'm glad iChat finally lets me have more than one Jabber account, though it'd be nice if there were a way to aggregate all the buddy list panes, together... Anyway, all in all, I like it better than Tiger, I just hope the two kernel panics I've seen aren't a trend (i.e., that they were related to one-time things happening just after the install)... ]]> Found in Translation tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.43 2007-10-25T08:41:19Z 2007-10-25T03:39:26Z Many years ago - I'd guess four, or five - I read that Google was developing a new technology for machine translation of human languages. This is a famously difficult task, one that people were initially optimistic would be quite... Moby Dick. I heard nothing else about it, and had almost forgotten about it. It seems I'd missed the announcement in spring of 2006 that they'd gone live with a version of this for English:Arabic and vice-versa. Today, they switched to the new system for all languages. Their old system was provided by Systran. Like MapQuest, they're now in the unenviable position of having Google suddenly put out a product that's noticeably better than yours. Since Systran is still used by the best-name-in-class Babel Fish, it's quite possible to compare the two methods. Some of the features in the new Google Translate may not be new, but I'm impressed with them. I've eschewed automatic translation in the past as being something that, if you tried to read Moby Dick with it, would probably be able to let you know it was about a whale. As a result, some of what I'm about to describe may not be completely new. I do not, in any way, know French. I found a Le Monde article about the California wildfires, and ran it through both Google Translate and Babel Fish. Unfortunately, both stumble out the gate. The story attempts to emulate the look of a print publication by having the first letter of the first sentence of the story be a large capital. Unfortunately, they do this not by increasing fonts, but by using a picture of a capital "C". This makes the opening phrase, "Cinq morts" ("Five dead") appear to the translators to be "inq morts". Both of them don't know the French word, "inq" (as it appears there is no such word) and simply leave it there, rendering it as "Cinq dead", with the "C" being an actual picture of a "C". This underscores a lot of the difficulties this field faces. Giving the benefit of the doubt, when I by-hand translated each opening phrase with "inq" replaced by "cinq", this is what I got: Original: Cinq morts et 500 000 personnes évacuées : le bilan des incendies qui ravagent le sud de la Californie depuis trois jours ne cesse de s'alourdir, alors que le présdident Bush est attendu dans la région mercredi 24 octobre. Babel Fish: Five died and 500 000 evacuated people: the assessment of the fires which have devastated the south of California for three days does not cease being weighed down, whereas Bush présdident it is awaited in the area Wednesday October 24. Google: Five people dead and 500,000 evacuees an assessment of fires ravaging southern California for three days continues to grow, while the présdident Bush is expected in the region Wednesday, October 24. The Babel Fish translation is quite difficult to follow - you can figure out that five are dead and 500k displaced, and Bush is coming on Wednesday, and the fires are in southern California. I'm pretty sure the original sentence was saying something more like "Five people dead and 500,000 evacuees: damage assessments of fires that have ravaged souther California for three days continues to grow, while President Bush is expected in the region Wedneday, October 24." The Google translation is much better, but far from perfect. Further in the article, from Babel Fish, we learn, "The zone around San Diego was touched hard by the flames, which were propagated with whole districts. The localities of Rancho Bernardo, Fallbrook and Ramona presented, Tuesday, of the scenes of apocalypse, with houses reduced in ashes and carcasses of cars strewing the streets. Lodging houses were installed, including one in a stage where were, Tuesday, some 20 000 moved. More than 1 660 km2 on the whole left in smoke, according to the Californian administration." I love the image of lodging houses being installed, including one in a stage. As always, it's quite possible to puzzle this all out - San Diego was "hit hard" (not "touched hard") by fire, which went across whole districts. Particular places looked apocolyptic, and they set up emergency shelters for the evacuated, while 1,660 square kilometres - I mean, kilometers - went up in smoke. Google handles this far from flawlessly, but better: "The area around San Diego has been the hardest hit by the flames, which have spread to entire neighborhoods. The locations in Rancho Bernardo, Fallbrook and Ramona showed on Tuesday, scenes of apocalypse, with houses reduced to ashes and carcasses of cars jonchant the streets. The shelters were set up, including one in a stadium whereabouts, Tuesday, some 20,000 displaced people. More than 1660 km2 in total went up in smoke, according to the administration of California." This does much better with idioms! "up in smoke" and "hit hard" are both translated idiomatically, as opposed to Babel Fish's "left in smoke" and "touched hard," respectively. Google rather unaccountably misses the word "jonchant", which, in-context does seem to mean what Babel Fish suggests, "strewing". This isn't a completely bizarre word, either, Google finds 48,200 web pages using it (now, 48, 201). Indeed, this French dictionary, which I can read only because of Google's translation tool, defines it as " present participle of the verb joncher," and lists "covering, disseminating, parsemant, covering lining" as synonyms. Google doesn't know "joncher," either. I've noticed this seems to be a general failing in the current Google system - a number of words come through, untranslated. The Systran system underpinning Babel Fish seems to have a more thorough simple word-to-word dictionary. This may be a side effect of Google's training documents. If your sources are all boring legal documents, you may not get much in the way of poetic words like "strewing". Presumably, this is improvable with more documents. Google also has an amazing interface to translated pages. I could see this being a real boon to those trying to learn a language. If you hover your mouse over a sentence, it pops up a bubble with the original language in it. This allows you to see the structure of the original sentence, which can be helpful in places where significant reordering of words has been performed by the software. Additionally, for those fluent (or for extremely obvious mistakes), Google provides a "Suggest a better translation" link. If they're proactive about getting those improvements in, the system could get a lot better, quickly. One reasonably obvious test of automatic systems is to run the output as the input - translate from English to French, and back again. Google, again, does noticeably better. The first lines of Mr. Melville's novel in the original English are "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world." After a round trip, Babel Fish renders this as "Call Me Ishmael. A few years ago - never the spirit how long with precision not having little or not money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on the shore, I thought myself would not sail about and would see the aqueous part of the world." In addition to being almost unreadable, a gratuitous "not" has been thrown in, making it seem as though the narrator had decided not to sail the seas! Google's rendering isn't perfect, but is a lot more palatable: "Call me Ishmael. A few years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular interest to me on the shore, I thought I would sail a little and see liquid part of the world." I think it is quite possible to figure out what this says. It's, in fact, getting on towards not being unpleasant to read. Not completely there, yet, but a great leap forward from Systran's technology. Of course, where Google wants this to be useful is in search. And, already, you can see the results. If you search for something that primarily returns results in your non-native language, Google will helpfully, right now, include a "Translate this page" link next to each result. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a crap shoot, as the summaries are still in the native language (e.g., French), which you can't read to see if the page linked is interesting. However, they have a fascinating new feature, "Translated Search. This lets you search for, say, "Cancun restaurants" in Spanish, and see the results, translated, in English. To be more explicit, it translates "Cancun Restaurants" into "Restaurantes Cancún", performs a Google search on that, and then translates the individual results. I read someone from Google a while back opining that they were hopeful that automated translation could make the web truly language-neutral. I scoffed. Il semble soudain beaucoup plus proche. ]]> Columbia State Historic Park tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.42 2007-10-22T14:59:53Z 2007-10-22T15:13:57Z This weekend, Betsy wanted to look at a couple of horses out in Gold Country. We stayed at an old hotel in Columbia State Historic Park, which is a mostly functional gold-rush style town. They're definitely more interested in convenience... (Canon Rebel XTI, EF 70-200mm/f2.8 lens, ISO 100, 1/15th sec., f2.8) Definitely learning a lot about depth of field, especially with autofocus. My old lens would do f3.5 maximum open, but zoomed in at its top of 135mm (which was most of the time) the widest open it could manage was f5.6. I'm also very happy that the extra two stops means even more low-lighting condition shots are possible. Bottom line on this lens is that it's really heavy, but takes great pictures. Now, though, I need to get a good smaller lens (maybe the EF-S 17-55?). My old lens went down to 28mm, so I never felt like I had to carry two lenses. Personally speaking, I think Canon's missing a slot in their f2.8 lens lineup - I'd love to have something more like my old 28-135mm lens in an f2.8 for when I just want to grab the camera and go without hauling a bunch of other stuff.]]> On The Day Before Our Eleventh Anniversary tag:www.baz.com,2007:/quark//1.40 2007-08-10T17:54:22Z 2007-08-10T17:58:03Z Returning from a camping trip, in which my white Toyota Tacoma pickup truck with just almost a quarter of a million miles on it ably hauled all of our gear and the whole family up and down the Sierras: She:... She: If your truck had a nose, it would be soft and whiskery. I: Hey... Are you hippopomorphizing my truck? She, laughing: I knew there was some reason I married you!]]>