Yahtzee!
Me, predicting the demise of PalmOS two years ago:
Palm is staying alive by retreating to the phone arena, where hardware is still less powerful, and efficiency therefore in greater demand; but this is obviously just a stalling tactic. In the very near future, Palm is doomed.
The WSJ, today:
Palm Inc. ... is planning on Monday to announce a new version of its Treo smartphone that runs Microsoft software, a person familiar with the matter said. Up to now, the Treo has exclusively used Palm`s operating system.
| September
23,
2005
The March of Science, cont.
I kinda thought I was kidding when I predicted a five-blade razor, but nope:
The Gillette Company today announced the launch of Gillette Fusion and Gillette Fusion Power, revolutionary new wet shaving systems for men... Both shaving systems feature a breakthrough 5 blade Shaving Surface technology on the front of the cartridge, with blades spaced 30 percent closer together than MACH3 blades.
Please, please tell me that there will never be a six-blade razor.
| September
15,
2005
The Uncanny Omnicompetence of Techies
Smart techies have, with disconcerting regularity, a deep-seated belief that the most difficult and complex subject in the world is tech (of whatever persuasion they’re interested in), and that since they’re smart enough to have mastered this tech stuff, they are therefore automatically smart enough to be an expert in any other field of human knowledge. This gives them a license to pontificate knowledgeably on any other subject without giving more than a few hours’ thought to it.
So it is that we end up with Lisp programmer and dot-com millionaire Paul Graham mathematically proving that you can’t reduce inequality without reducing economic growth, and that we therefore shouldn’t try.
You might think that Graham’s conclusions would suffer from not having any particular expertise in the area, or (apparently) not even having looked into the considerable economic literature on the topic, but this isn’t the case. It turns out that when actual economists discuss the relationship between inequality and growth, they just blather on about models and statistics and data, and end with a wishy-washy conclusion that the data and the state of economic theory is inconclusive to prove any relationship. This indecisiveness can’t compare to Graham’s absolute mathematical proof and definitive conclusion.
Advantage: Graham!
| September
5,
2005