“The More I Find Out, The Less I Know”
Baby, It’s Cold Out There
-25.2F was the low at our house last night, handily beating the lowest temperature from last year (-17.9F). Once you get to that level, temperature is more about keeping score than anything else.
Sure, it costs more to heat the house, and the car is less likely to start, but from a human perspective, there's not much difference once the temperature gets below zero. It's just cold. You add an extra layer if you have to, but the psychological effect is minimal.
Shiver me Timbers
The temperature this morning was -17F at my house, with an overnight low of -18. It would have been colder, except that a cloud layer moved in overnight, which helps hold the heat in. Tonight, they're forecasting even colder weather. We could break the big two-oh.
We have a goofy tradition where I try to pick the coldest night of the year to invite folks over for a barbecue. Since we have a birthday party for the twins on Saturday (they're two), I think that will be the magic day this year. Folks in southern climes may find this surprising, but grilling outdoors works just fine in the winter. You just have to get the food inside fast because it gets cold quickly.
In-Situ Ice Palace Construction
The St. Paul Winter Carnival Ice Palace has been open for a little over a week now, and they're doing a land-office business. For those not familiar with this odd tradition up here in the Frozen North, every decade or so on average since the late 1800's, the city of St. Paul has built a huge palace from blocks of ice cut from a nearby frozen lake. Lit with colored spotlights from the inside, the result is truly spectacular.
My reaction on seeing the Ice Palace was probably the same as most guys of my age and personality type: "Cool! I want one for my backyard!"
6:30 AM Block Party
Woke up this morning to 3-4 inches of fresh snow, and a nice drift at the end of the driveway from the plow. This was not unexpected, as the weather forecasters had been predicting a nice snowstorm, and we'll probably get another 3-4 inches before it is all over.
So, I asked She Who Puts Up With Me to take care of getting the kids dressed and breakfasted, so I could go out and shovel the driveway before we had to leave. She moaned once, and pulled the covers more tightly over herself. I took this as agreement with my plan, and went out into the fresh blanket of white armed with my shovel to do battle with the forces of nature.
Politics and Risk
Some interesting fatality statistics. Most of these are from 2000, but I used 2001 statistics where I could find them. These are the number of deaths in the U.S. for various causes per year.
I can’t wait until they’re all in school
Since Scooter was born, we've had four nannies, not counting the occasional fill-in. The first was allergic to the cat, so she left after about three months. The second stayed for three years, until she had a baby and didn't want to make the long commute with a newborn. Number three overlapped with number two (for while number two was pregnant, and the twins were newborns), and has continued to work off-and-on since then. Number four was the full-time replacement for number two, and left after a year when we started putting the twins in preschool and cut back her hours.
Adsense == Micropayments
Micropayment schemes have been around since the beginning of the graphical web browser. I remember in 1994 or 1995 listening to a presentation at NCSA (home of Mosaic, the original browser) about an early idea for micropayments. At the time, I was impressed by all the thought which had gone into ensuring cryptographic anonymity, fraud protection, and so forth, but I wasn't really clear as to why someone would want to buy a newspaper one article at a time. The ensuing years have recorded the failure of one micropayment system after another, each more elegant than the last.
Not Too Much Taxes, but Too Many
The problem with the American tax system is not that we pay too much taxes: by the standards of developed nations, we don't. The problem is that we pay too many taxes. Here, for example, is a probably incomplete list of the taxes my as-yet unprofitable startup pays:
Adsense and Agency
Google's AdSense program (the program which is serving ads on this site) presents a twisted version of the agency problem, where Google is acting as an agent for parties (advertisers and content providers), but has an incentive to act against the best interests of the parties it represents.
An agent is a person or organization hired to represent some other person or company, and carry out certain activities on behalf of the represented person. A classical agency problem arises when the financial incentives of the agent run counter to the best interests of the person the agent represents. For example, a stockbroker with trading discretion (the right to make trades on behalf of a client) is supposed to act in the client's best interest, but gets paid on commission when trades are made. The all-too-common result is that the broker makes unnecessary trades in the client's account, racking up commissions but doing little good for the client.
Why can’t the web be more like television?
This is in the "They Still Don't Get It?!" category: starting today , a company called Unicast will be displaying full-motion full-screen full-audio TV commercials on web browsers when the user leaves certain sites. According to the New York Times article, you will be happily browsing a participating site (say, MSN, or iVillage). When you leave the site, a 30-second TV commercial starts playing in your browser window. You have the option of clicking past the commercial, but if you do nothing, you get the whole shebang, audio and all.
Does it even matter what the contract says?
Our woes with Protection One continue, with many letters exchanged so far, but no resolution. Protection One is claiming that we have only a short window once a year in which we can cancel the contract, otherwise it becomes irrevocable for another year. I see no such language in the contract, nor was that my understanding of the meaning of the contract at the time it was signed.
This has led me to wonder: have we now entered an age when fair and reasonable business practices--and even consumer protection laws--have become circumvented by one-sided consumer contracts? To obtain almost any kind of service these days, from a credit card to a mobile phone to an airline ticket, requires signing or agreeing to a densely-worded contract which very few people can even understand, and which nobody actually gets the opportunity to negotiate.
Why is space hard?
When Captain Picard is ready to fly up from the surface of the Earth to the Enterprise, he just hops onto a shuttle and zips up into orbit. We've been bombarded with these images for so long, a lot of non-technical people might not fully appreciate just how hard it is to get into orbit with current technology. So, for the benefit of those who aren't technically inclined, this article presents a brief overview of why it is so difficult and expensive to get into space.
Jobs Follow People, Not the Other Way Around
Remember: if you're fighting a war, there's two ways to lose. The enemy can destroy you (not likely from a bunch of extremists half a planet away), or the enemy can make you commit suicide. Our response since 9/11 has often been more driven by irrational fear and paranoia, rather than a considered response to a known threat. That way lies madness.
Birthday Party
Scooter's 5th birthday party was this past Saturday. We learned our lesson from prior years, and dispensed with the structured activities, competitive games, and oh yes, Chuck E. Cheese.
Choosing Schools
Scooter visited Blake's Kindergarden this week, as part of the admissions process. This is the same school I went to from 8th grade on, and the experience was a little surreal.
Three of my high school classmates (out of about 100) are now working there, two as elementary-level teachers, and one as the assistant head of the middle school.
Funding as a Predictor of Failure
Tim Bray has been doing a series of late on technology success predictors, the latest of which is a list of factors which may be important, including investor support.
Asks Bray: "Is a heavy flow of investment dollars an important predictive success factor?"
Having spent a lot of years in and around the venture community and watching startups, I know that there are two things which can kill a nascent technology: not enough money, and too much money. Not enough money is obvious. Too much money seems counterintuitive, but is just as deadly.
Microsoft’s iPod Killer?
Microsoft is floating an "iPod killer" which will pack audio and video playback into a Windows CE-based device costing $400 to $700. Units will be available in mid-2004, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say this product (at least as it is being shown currently) will land with a dull thud. In fact, I'm going to go even farther, and suggest that this will become an excellent case study of how good theories don't translate into good products.
Theory: To beat iPod, you have to do it better. It is pretty hard to refine the digital music player much beyond the iPod, which fits the niche almost perfectly. An excellent combination of storage capacity, form factor and experience (aka user interface), the only thing it needs is a lower price, and that's supposed to be coming. So how do you do iPod one better?
Why, add video, of course!
Bzzzzzzt! Wrong answer.
More Evidence of a Maturing Software Industry
A front-page article in today's Wall Street Journal (free link should work for a week) headlined "Large Software Customers Refuse to Get With the Program" brings me back to an article I wrote a couple months ago about the maturing software industry . The thrust of the WSJ article is that (a) large enterprise software companies are having a hard time getting customers to upgrade, so they're (b) raising support costs and dropping support for older versions in a bid to raise more revenue, which is leading their customers to (c) switch vendors or go to internally supporting the software because they no longer see the value in upgrading. None of this is unexpected, and it is symptomatic of a seismic shift in the software industry which will be felt particularly hard in Redmond.