The following slides from Mary Meeker’s recent presentation on the State of the Internet are online here (PDF).
Some interesting facts in this deck, relating to many of the big internet players, including the company I work for, eBay.
Worth reading.
When is a Penny worth two cents?
When you factor in current metal prices, the US Mint is in a bit of a pickle.
I caught this article today on Seeking Alpha, which discusses a lot of topics, ranging from the new US Mint commercials, to the cost of making the penny and the nickel.
According to this report from July 2006, the US penny is made up of 97.5% Zinc, and 2.5% Copper. As of July metal prices, it cost the US approximately 1.4 cents to mint a penny. Given the recent rise in metal prices since then, it may be closer to two cents now.
According to this link from the US Mint, they produced 7.348 Billion pennies in 2006. If they mint the same in 2007, that means we’ll lose approximately $73.5 Million in production costs of pennies alone.
Everyone picks on the penny, but I thought this tidbit about the nickel was interesting also, since it looks like it is in the same boat:
And speaking of nickels, composed of 75 percent nickel and 25 percent copper, this coin has its own budget problems. When the calculation was done in July with the price of nickel at $13 a pound, the value of the metal content alone came out to almost seven cents.
If other production costs and the current metal price are factored in, it’s closer to a dime.
I’m a little surprised that there hasn’t been some form of arbitrage to buy pennies in bulk and sell them for scrap metal. Maybe the scrap prices are still too low to make it worthwhile.
Already, with Platinum and Gold prices rising, you’ve seen a breakout of new metals in relatively fancy jewelery (like wedding bands) – Titanium, and in some cases, Tungsten Carbide! I wonder if we’ll need to do a metal rotation in our currency to “less expensive” metals.
It seems that inevitably the smaller coins will eventually vanish – not due to inflation, but due to the growing use of digital forms of payment (credit/debit cards, key fobs, cell phones).
In the meantime, though, when someone gives you a few pennies and a nickel for change, you can feel smug about getting double your money’s worth in metal.
Riya tries again as Like.com
I read a lot of news today about Riya trying to reinvent itself as Like.com today. Of all the coverage, Don Dodge’s summary resonated with me the most.
I think Don uses Riya to summarize of the key takeaways I had from my own experience in venture capital:
The lesson for entrepreneurs is don’t have preconceived notions about how your product/service will be used. Test with lots of different customers to discover where they see value. Remember, it is not about the technology…it is about the problem it solves.
Personally, while I find Riya’s technology truly exciting in its potential, this new direction feels a bit too manufactured, a bit too orchestrated and timely. It rings of smart people figuring out strategy behind closed doors, rather than a true customer-driven request or need.
Metadata tagging of blogs and pictures is hot right now, but tagging of video is just getting started. Is it that hard to believe that in a few years, when studios build the digital versions of their properties for distribution (either BD/HD DVD and/or download versions) that they will tag them with the appropriate commercial content? Wouldn’t it be easier for software on the web or on your TV box to just then link to appropriate interesting items (like boots, dresses, cars, other product placements) to a rev-share storefront for the studio? And wouldn’t the owners of that content want to control that linkage – charge for it, since it’s their property (the movie, the show, the shot) that’s driving the demand?
This is hot technology and it’s incredibly generalized, but in many cases we tend to look for the ultimate solution when a very simple, manual process can hit the business need 80/20. So I’m still not sure this is a business vs. a cool demo.
BTW If you haven’t tried it out, go see the Like.com Alpha site. 
Goodbye Eudora. Goodbye Safari. Hello, Apple Mail & Firefox.
To everything, turn, turn turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep (continued)
I guess I’m getting overly sentimental about saying goodbye to my favorite internet applications, but the time has come.
I’ve been using Eudora on the Mac since 1992, when I finally got a dorm room in-wall connection to the Internet at Stanford. I have thousands of folders, gigabytes of email. I have little notes to classmates, friends, family from the last 15 years. I even have some very cute, flirty notes that I had sent in 1997 at Apple to the woman who would later become my girlfriend and then wife.
But Eudora has been so long abandoned by its owner (Qualcomm), so underdeveloped (it still lacks HTML email), and so unmanageable (archaic search functionality) that it is time to say goodbye. I will miss your ability to easily read Unix mailboxes, your simple file structure, and most of all, your ability to execute filters on a manual key-command trigger.
I’m moving to Apple Mail, and I’m also moving the brave new world of “search-based” email management. Instead of thousands of folders, I’ll just have one for “saved email”, and I’ll use “smart folders” to save searches for key people or topics.
I’m less attached to Safari, but I’ve stuck with it because of its tight integration into Mac OS X. I’m just tired of website forms not working properly on Safari 2.x. It seems I have to use Firefox more and more often anyway, just to be compatible with many of the websites I visit. Firefox 2 looks strong enough, and Mac-like enough for me to move over. Maybe I’ll change my mind again with Safari 3.0 in a few months, but for now, I’m making the move.
I found a nice application to move bookmarks from Safari to Firefox, so I’m good to go. I’ll post if there are any problems.
So, goodbye old friends. You will always have a place in my heart.
Mentos & Diet Coke Rockets
How is it possible that I have not made one of these before?
Diet Coke & Mentos Rocket on YouTube
Based on the well known Diet Coke & Mentos experiments… just do a search for “diet coke mentos” on YouTube.
What an easy way to waste 30 minutes…
… but this does seem like a fun father/son outing at some point. Here is a nice web page on the science behind the Diet Coke/Mentos geyser effect.
Should Election Results Be Posted in Realtime?
I’ve been watching the 2006 Election Results all night, and I thought I’d share a discussion I had with my uncle tonight. Well, debate is more like it.
So far with this blog, I haven’t really solicited many opinions here. But maybe it’s time for me to try one of those “Tell me what you think” posts.
The question is:
“Will the United States move to realtime election results in the next 20 years?”
I’ll represent some of the key points from the discussion here, and I’d love it if you’d comment with your own thoughts and feedback. (I’ve simplified the arguments and made them more third person for readability)
Me: People are demanding realtime information more and more with the advent of technologies like the Internet. I know many people who want to know election results as they happen, not waiting until the polls closed. I think the United States might move to realtime election results in the next 20 years.
Uncle: Never. Releasing results before the polls close would definitely affect the outcome. It will never happen.
Me: No doubt it would influence the outcome. But it’s unclear to me that it would influence it in a bad way.
Uncle: If your candidate is losing, you might get discouraged and not go to the polls.
Me: Sure, if your candidate is losing, you might be discouraged from voting. Or, it might inspire you to actually go to the polls and vote. It’s hard to say that it would hurt anything, although it would change the dynamic.
Uncle: This country has a long tradition of secret ballots. Voting is a personal thing, it’s not supposed to be disclosed.
Me: It would still be anonymous. You could easily make sure to only report results in an anonymous fashion, not identifiable. Secret ballot is about people not facing persecution for who they voted for, not delayed results.
Uncle: It will never happen. No country reports elections like that, why would we change?
Me: Everything is moving towards more information and more transparency. It’s very hard to argue in a Democracy that less transparency is a good thing (though not impossible in some cases). Just because it hasn’t been historically possible or expected doesn’t mean that now that it is possible, it won’t be expected. The reason I say 20 years is that 20 years will roughly be the time before the “computer generations” – Gen X & younger – outnumber the Baby Boomers.
Uncle: I think you are way to focused on the computer thing. It will never happen.
I’ll give my Uncle the last word… not.
It’s not about computers, it’s about an insatiable demand for information immediately to help inform decisions. As it becomes common in more and more areas of life, it seems to me that people will expect it in others, like politics.
I’m actually not saying this necessarily will happen, but it’s interesting to think about:
- Whether it will or won’t happen?
- Would it be a good thing or a bad thing?
In 1980, Jimmy Carter conceded at 6:04pm, before the polls had closed on the west coast. Similar issues have taken place over the past two decades.
So, what do you think? Let’s see if we can break my comment record on this blog with more than three on this post! 🙂
2006: The Year of 7 Foot Tall Tomatoes
One of the things I have not shared yet on this blog is that I love to garden.
When I moved back to the Bay Area in 2001, my wife and I lived in an apartment for two years. However, even there, I managed to jury-rig five planter boxes and some grow lights on a timer to try and grow herbs, peppers, and tomatoes on the balcony. They turned out surprisingly well, although I never got a lot of fruit out of the tomatoes.
One of the great things about owning a home, for me, has been the ability to garden. In 2004, I built three planter boxes in the backyard, and this was the first year I tried to grow tomatoes in them.
Wow.
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- 7 foot tall tomato vines
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- Yellow Lemon Tomatoes
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- Sweet 100 Tomatoes
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- Delighted 2 year old
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- Fun to pick, fun to eat
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- Daddy, did you see these?
My son, Jacob, who is exactly 3 feet tall, is provided for some sort of scale. The redwood box around the tomatoes is approximately seven (7) feet tall.
Nothing magical about the box. Just 1 foot above the ground, one inch cedar planks. Soil is 1/2 compost, 1/2 standard bag soil. I planted three tomato vines this year – a hybrid grape tomato (red), a lemon boy hybrid (yellow), and an heirloom variety called Mr. Stripey (red & yellow stripes). All did shockingly well, although the two hybrids are the overgrown ones.
There is a funny story for the redwood frame. In August, we went away on vacation. When we came back, the tomato plants had grown so large they actually tipped over and bent the 3 1/2 foot steel cages! I had to rebend the cage as best I could, chop away about half of the plants, and then build the redwood frame around them to support the entire mass.
We lost about 1/2 the plant mass, but I saved the vines. Within a month, they had grown another two feet tall, filling the frame!
It’s nice to live in a climate where tomato plants still think November is a time to be in bloom – I’ve been harvesting my third crop this past week… if the weather holds off, it looks like I might sneak in a fourth.
Anyway, enjoy the pictures. For those curious about the trellis behind the tomatoes, I also grew lemon cucumbers and cantaloupes this year, in a 3×3 box with a 6 foot trellis. I must have harvested over 50 cucumbers and a dozen cantaloupes from that small space (two vines each). Amazing! I highly recommend “vertical gardening” for the space challenged.
I’ll save the story of my peppers for another time. Not quite as exciting as the habanero explosion of 2005 anyway…
Blogs I Read: Herb Greenberg
I have been reading Herb Greenberg since he was a financial columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle (yes, there was a time when I had a subscription to that paper).
I followed him to TheStreet.com, and even ponied up $99 a year for a while for the privilege of reading his articles.
Now, he is at CBS Marketwatch, and even better, he has a blog!
You want to read Herb regularly if you are a fundamentals-based investor, and you like to read pieces about hot companies where some of the numbers may be in question. Herb is very good about admitting mistakes, but I have to say, he’s normally very ahead of the curve with company problems. As a result, there are quite a few CEOs out there who hate him.
Here are a couple of posts from his blog today that explain why Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, hates Herb:
Overstock: It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya – a conspiracy!
More Overstock: Why Investors got Byrned.
You might not realize it from these pieces, but Herb was writing about rising inventory levels and low turnover long before the public-facing numbers turned.
He’s fairly high on my RSS feed list. I think if you invest in individual stocks, he should be on yours as well.
Why I love Timber as an Asset Class
I found this article on the Motley Fool this week called “Is Lumber the New Gold“, and it reminded me why Timber might be my favorite asset class of all.
I was first introduced to Timber as an asset class at Harvard Business School, in one of my classes on Venture Capital & Private Equity. Dave Swensen, who managed the Yale endowment for over 20 years, discussed the strategy that led Yale to incredible outperformance in the 1980s and 1990s. He took the endowment from $1.3 Billion to $14 Billion, using a strategy very different than his colleagues.
It would be a whole different post to sing the praises of Mr. Swensen, and his philosophy on investing has now become public knowledge since he released a book on the subject. In his discussion with the class, I remember his specific comments on assets that had extremely attractive risk/reward ratios. Private Equity is one, to be sure, but he also allocated over 20% of his funds to “real assets”, which included Timber.
Timber is fascinating as an asset class. Here is a summary, cribbed from a recent post on Seeking Alpha:
- Excellent Returns. Annual returns of 14.5% since 1972. Better returns than any common asset class (stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities)
- Less Volatility than Stocks. What? More reward with less risk? It shouldn’t be true, but it here at least empirically.
- Timber is counter-cyclical with Stocks. Especially nice to have an asset that zigs when the stock market zags.
- Money grows on Trees. Fundamentally, you have to like the fact that 6% growth every year comes from the fact that trees just grow bigger with natural sun & water. The value of trees is also non-linear, in that growers can just “not cut” in weak years for timber prices, and make even more in subsequent years.
Here’s a nice post from Seeking Alpha in July on why Timber should outperform in an inflationary market. It even features my personal favorite REIT stock in the sector, Plum Creek Lumber (PCL), which I’ve owned since 2002.
You have to love the web. I found this fantastic blog post from 2005 on Timber. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Until recently, it was very hard to invest in timber without a portfolio allocation in the millions of dollars. However, now, there are several ways to add timber to your portfolio. My favorite are the REIT stocks, like PCL & RYN, which allow you to own companies who have a primary business in owning & maintaining timber land. Given the regulations around managing timber land, and the tax-advantages of the REIT structure, it’s hard to get better direct exposure.
It’s interesting, but as the trend continues towards development & environmental protection, these firms should have an even more compelling advantage as the supply of quality timber dwindles, and the regulatory environment grows more arduous. Even the sleepy paper companies are starting to look more valuable for the timber land that they own, rather than the product they produce.
It’s so interesting that money, in some cases, really can grow on trees.
Update (6/13/2007): A commenter forwarded me to a webpage that had a link to one of my favorite articles on timber as an ivnestment, from a 2001 issue of Smart Money magazine. Check it out here.
VMware Fusion goes Beta & Virtualization for Mac OS X Intel goes Pro
Hot. Hot. Hot.
That’s all I can say about the launch of the beta program for VMware’s virtualization platform for Mac OS X on Intel.
There is a great write-up on the new beta on tuaw.com (The Unoffical Apple Weblog)
What’s exciting about this release?
- Run multiple OSes. You can run a large number of x86 OSes on VMware, including Windows & Linux.
- Run as many instances as you want. Why stop at running two? VMware customers have gotten used to running as many as their hardware can support. The Mac Pro with four Xeons can certainly handle more than two.
- Virtual Appliances. Pre-configured OS images set up to serve as network servers – all running on a single machine. There are over 300 virtual network appliances to choose from.
- Leverage Multiple Cores. Unlike Parallels, VMware understands how to use multi-core chips, like the Intel Core Duo and Xeon chips that Apple machines use.
- Drag & Drop between Windows & Mac. This is the major gap in the current Parallels software. You will want to move files between the two.
I currently don’t find the need to run Windows much – except for Outlook at work. Given the fact that no other Intel machine can run Mac OS, this makes owning a Mac likely the most flexible choice for people who prefer the Mac for personal use, but need Windows or Linux from time to time.
Q&A with Milton Friedman: Education, Health Care & Iraq
There is a wonderful Q&A with Milton Friedman in today’s San Jose Mercury News. Milton Friedman is 94, and won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976.
He is most famous for being the intellectual backbone for more libertarian monetary policy, and the economic grounding for the Reagan administration.
MercuryNews.com | 11/05/2006 | Q&A with Milton Friedman
It is very hard to read the writings of Friedman, or even his live Q&A, without being immediately struck by the depth of his intellect and the strength of his convictions. You may disagree with some of his policy conclusions, but his type of clarity is rare.
Since I was only 5 years old when Reagan was elected, I obviously didn’t appreciate at the time the momentous step this country took in rejecting Jimmy Carter and embracing Reagan in the heart of hyper-inflation, recession, and international trauma. However, I’ve learned over time that many of the aspects of the Reagan administration that I did appreciate seem to be derivatives of Milton Friedman’s philosophy.
I’m going to reproduce the text of the article here, only because I don’t trust the SJ Mercury news to keep the link live forever. However, if the link above still works, use it.
Q&A with Milton Friedman
NOBEL PRIZE WINNER EXPOUNDS ON EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, IRAQBy Scott Duke Harris
Mercury NewsWhen Milton Friedman talks, not everybody listens. To many, his libertarian views are predictable. But he always offers grist for debate.
Friedman recently sat down with the Mercury News for an interview. Following are edited excerpts of the conversation:
Q You’ve described yourself as “a libertarian with a small ‘I’ and a Republican with a capital ‘R,’ ” for expediency. Yet you’ve expressed disappointment with Republican control of the federal government. Why?
A If you look at the record, the structure of government that is most favorable to low spending and low taxes is a Democrat in the White House and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, because the spending propensities of the Democrats are held down by Republicans. And when you have a Republican government in power, those spending propensities aren’t held down. In this case, we’ve got Republicans all around, and the budget has gotten out of control.
Obviously the Republicans had been out of [the White House] for a long time, and when they got it [in 2000], they had things they wanted to do, and they did it regardless of the budget consequences.
The problem is not the deficit. The problem is the amount of spending — the fraction of people’s income — which is spent for them, on their behalf by their government.
Q But many people find the deficits troubling.
A I am not concerned with deficits in the federal budget at all. I am concerned with the level of the federal budget. I’d rather have a $1 trillion budget with a deficit of $1 trillion, than have a $2 trillion budget that is completely balanced with taxes.
The deficit is a form of hidden taxation. . . . So I’m not satisfied with a high structural deficit, but it’s really because that implies a high level of government spending.
Q What troubles you about the spending?
A Everything. Most of the spending is wasted. . . . The worst is the “earmarks,” because they have no democratic control at all, being arbitrarily set in by individual members.
If you take education: The federal constitution doesn’t have the word education in it, but every state constitution does. . . . In 1994, when the Republicans took over [Congress], their “Contract With America” included abolishing the Department of Education. Instead, 12 years later now, the [department’s] budget has tripled or quadrupled — something like that.
Q Your ideas influenced the rise of economic conservatism, from Reagan to George Bush today. How would you compare the Reagan and Bush administrations?
A The thing that endears [Reagan] is that he was a person of principle. He was willing to take political chances in order to promote his principles.
At the time Reagan became president, in 1980, we had gone through a period of high inflation and high unemployment. The Federal Reserve, after Reagan got elected, changed to a very restrictive policy, which broke the back of the inflation, but also created a very substantial recession. And Reagan’s standing in public opinion polls went way down.
No other president in the post-war period would have stuck with that policy. Every one of them would have forced the Fed to reverse that policy before it really broke the hold on recession. . . .
I think the problem with the Bush administration is that the whole thing is dominated by Iraq. . . . I think going into Iraq was a mistake. But once you got into it, you’ve got to live with what you’re doing. And it would be an equally big mistake, or bigger, to pull out prematurely. You’ve got to try to come out with some honor and some measure of success. I don’t know how to do it, and the prospects do not look good. The situation looks terrible. . . .
To look beyond Iraq, Bush had been on the right side. He cut taxes, and he was in favor of trying to privatize Social Security. . . . He’s been in favor of getting rid of the inheritance tax, which is the right thing.
Q Is there no tax you like?
A Yes, there are taxes I like. For example, the gasoline tax, which pays for highways. You have a user tax. The property tax is one of the least bad taxes, because it’s levied on something that cannot be produced — that part that is levied on the land. So some taxes are worse than others, but all taxes are bad.
As things are now, taxes amount to something like 35 to 40 percent of national income, if you include federal, state and local taxes. Out of every dollar the average citizen earns, he gets to spend 60 cents of it — and not according to his own views, because the government also steps in and says what you can and cannot spend on. For example, according to the government, you cannot spend it on cocaine. I’m in favor of legalization of all drugs.
Q And prostitution?
A Well, sure.
Q What are the economic issues you’re thinking about now?
A On the one hand, health care. And on the other hand, education . . .
We have a very poor education system. I’m talking about elementary and secondary. Something like a quarter to a third of all youngsters never graduate high school and those who graduate high school are in many cases barely literate in terms of reading, writing and arithmetic. In international comparisons, our kids do quite well at grade 1 to 4, but as you go up the grade levels, the performance gets worse and worse in comparison other countries. So it looks like we have a system that teaches kids not to learn rather than one that teaches them to learn.
And in health care today, most transactions are third party transactions. Traditionally, you would go to the doctor and there would be a deal between you and him. Direct payment. [Today] that almost never happens because of insurance — so-called insurance.
It’s a misnomer really. It isn’t insurance at all. Insurance makes sense when you have a small probability for a large cost and you want to share that probability with others. But it doesn’t make sense for ordinary day-to-day care. What we call medical insurance is not really insurance at all. It’s pre-paid medical care.
Q How would you respond?
A By getting rid of third-party payment — by returning it to a deal between the patient and the provider. You don’t need that institutional framework. That huge framework largely is the result of third-party payment.
Q Has anything in recent history made you question your convictions?
A No, on the contrary. . . . The basic conviction is that the biggest danger to human freedom comes from government. . . .
The collapse of the Soviet Union has persuaded almost everybody around the world that collective organization is not a good way to run a country.
Is there anybody now who believes that’s a good way to run a country? I don’t think so.
Pimp Your Ride, Tivo-Style
What’s another $50 when you are talking about your love for Tivo?
$49.99 and it can be yours.
Courtesy of Engadget.
Roth IRA Loophole: Everyone Can Qualify in 2010
This is not really new news, but I thought it was interesting enough to share broadly. Since it’s about saving for retirement, hopefully some of you out there will get some benefit from this information.
Om May 17, 2006, President Bush signed the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA). It’s very likely that this news didn’t really get your attention, but if you are an active saver for retirement, it should.
One of the best innovations for retirement savings in the last ten years has been the Roth IRA. The Roth IRA is an Individual Retirement Account, and like other IRAs, it is a special type of account with tax advantages to help people save for their retirement.
The magic of the Roth IRA is that it turns the tax liability for normal IRAs on its head. Most retirement accounts, like 401Ks and IRAs allow you to put money into the account, and deduct the contributions from your income. Your savings then gets to build, tax-free, until you retire. You think have to pay full income tax on the withdrawals.
This is a big benefit, and a great way to help save for retirement. However, the Roth IRA improves on this quite a bit.
With a Roth IRA, you do not get the deduction up front. In fact, you can only fund a Roth IRA with post-tax money. However, the magic is, once it goes in a Roth IRA, you will never pay taxes on it again – or the gains. For a young person in their 20s and 30s, this is an amazing way to accumulate wealth over the long term. Roth IRAs also have some tax benefits for estate planning.
Sounds good, right? In fact, there is only one big problem with the Roth IRA. It’s a benefit that isn’t available to people who make higher incomes. The limits of the program are that you must make less than $95K as an individual, or $150K married, to either contribute or convert an existing IRA to a Roth IRA.
Here’s where the loophole comes in.
As part of the tax act, Congress has officially abolished the income limits for Roth IRA conversion in 2010. That means you will able to convert existing IRAs into Roth IRAs, regardless of income. You can’t contribute to a Roth IRA if your income is too high, but you can convert an existing IRA.
“Great,” you say. “Hooray for 2010.” But this is where the loophole comes in.
You can start funding your regular, non-deductible IRAs this year, in 2006. You can continue to do this in 2007, 2008 & 2009. Then in 2010, you can convert all of these funds over to the Roth IRA. And since the non-deductible IRA is funded with after-tax money, you will only have to pay a small amount of tax on the conversion based on the gains from 2006 to 2010.
This is a fantastic window to convert a sizeable amount of savings into a Roth IRA, even if Congress only keeps this window open for one year.
Some people might ask, why would Congress offer this great incentive? Actually, it was done to help bring in revenue in the short term. This opening in 2010 will draw a lot of money into the Roth IRA program, which will generate a lot of taxes in 2010 as people convert their funds over. Because our government tends to only focus on the short term (5-10 years), this looks like a gain because the lower tax revenue from the Roth accounts doesn’t hit for decades.
Everyone’s financial situation is different, but if you’ve been interested in Roth IRA accounts, and you’ve been unable to participate, your window is now open.
Here is another article I found on the same topic.
Blogs I Read: Mac Mojo (The Microsoft Office for Mac Team Blog)
This is a relatively new one for me, but I find the posts pretty interesting from time to time.
This is the team blog from the group responsible for Microsoft Office for the Mac. Most people don’t realize this, but Microsoft Office actually originated on the Mac, and despite all the conspiracy theories, the business continues to be a fairly large one for Microsoft.
For example, check out this post from yesterday about the size of the Microsoft Office for Mac codebase. It shocked the hell out of me:
30 million lines of code. For a suite of applications. Unbelievable.
For those of you non-technical folks out there, this is a really big number. I remember when it was revealed that Windows XP was approximately 40 million lines of code, and Sun had a field day pointing out that Solaris was only 7 million at the time.
In software, bigger is rarely better from a complexity or reliability standpoint. This blog post explains some of the very human reasons why.
I personally have always believed that a complete rewrite is likely necessary from time to time with software applications, usually every 3rd to 4th major version or so. The problem is, the economics so rarely support re-writing a codebase. The time you spend rebuilding what already works could be spent on building new features, or fixing old ones.
In a small way, this legacy cost is what helps fuel the ongoing development of new applications, new companies, and new businesses. It is always easy for the new entrant to “rebuild” what already exists. This doesn’t make up for the incredible market advantage that the large players have, but it’s an interesting cost advantage that you don’t normally see in most industries.
Anyway, check it out. Since I am a longtime Office for Mac user, I like seeing ongoing communication from their team to the community.
Blogs I Read: Good Morning Silicon Valley
This is actually a blog I’ve been reading since before there were blogs, and this was just a daily email sent out by John Paczkowski.
I don’t know why, but I just find John’s nose for news interesting, and his wry sense of humor engaging. Take yesterday’s post for example:
I just find “The Princess Bride” reference hilarious, and of course, the coverage of Microsoft timely with the Novell Linux deal.
This is definitely one worth adding to your feed list, especially if you care at all about high tech and/or news from Silicon Valley. This blog is hosted by the SJ Mercury News, but it’s still worth reading.
Psychohistory 