Feel better about the fine red wine that you are drinking

by philg

Enjoying your $10 bottle of fine varietal French wine? This New York Times article reveals that the 750ml of wine inside cost 46 cents. This is a bit of a scandal because the French were supposed to supply a finer grade of pinot noir for closer to $1. Fortunately, apparently even none of the experts at the importer/packager could taste the difference. Regardless of the quality of wine, the federal government collects a 21 cent/bottle tax (source). In Massachusetts, we pay an additional tax of about 10 cents on 750 ml (source). So we thought that we were paying $10 for $1.30 worth of wine and taxes but it turns out that we received instead about 75 cents worth of wine and taxes.

[According to this BBC article, the fraud was discovered because the producers exported more pinot noir to Gallo than the entire region was capable of producing.]

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Toyota good example of the value of software developers?

by philg

Lost in the news coverage of the Toyota acceleration debacle is the value of a good programmer. Consider that Nissan and the German car makers (perhaps because they use components from Bosch?) all have a line of a code that says “IF the brake is pressed THEN ignore accelerator input and set throttle to idle”. It wasn’t a top executive who put that line of code in, but a humble computer programmer. The Toyota programmers didn’t do this and now their company is losing perhaps billions of dollars in long-term sales and profits (the value of the company in the stock market has dropped by approximately $20 billion).

In http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/business/global/18toyota.html, the Toyota top executive is reduced to characterizing the already proven-to-fail system as “fail-safe”:

“Toyota uses many sensors to ensure its electronic throttle systems are fail-safe,” Mr. Toyoda said. The company has conducted “rigorous tests” of the system to make sure it did not trigger sudden acceleration, he said.

Is it possible that we’ll see more respect given to programmers when the dust settles from this?

[Separately, I experimented with my 2007 Nissan sedan, touching the brakes while flooring the accelerator. This is the one time in three years that I have looked at the huge tachometer hogging dashboard real estate! It slowly rolled from 2500 RPM to 1200 or so.]

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One-year anniversary of the stimulus act; how are we doing?

by philg

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the stimulus act of 2009. How has it worked out for the U.S.? Beyond the explicit stimulus package, government at local, state, and federal levels have been acting in a stimulus-like fashion, continuing to grow as though the private economy had not contracted.

One element of stimulus that I think might not work as planned is infrastructure investment. Let’s look at the I-35 bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis and was rebuilt in 2007-8. According to Wikipedia, the original bridge cost $5.2 million to build in 1964-7, which is roughly $35 million in today’s dollars (admittedly not a bargain, given that it collapsed, but the collapse was due to a design flaw, not faulty construction or shoddy materials). The replacement cost $234 million. Public infrastructure, employing as it does an army of civil servants (and their pension obligations), union labor, and drawers full of lawyers, turns out to be one of the most expensive things in the world to buy. A sensible consumer, faced with a 7X increase in the real price of a good, would purchase less of that good rather than more. China is managing to grow quite nicely with a much smaller amount of public infrastructure per person (admittedly the country has been famous for its bridges since the time of Marco Polo (example; history)).

So… are we better or worse off than if the government had not kept spending for the last year? (The federal deficit alone is approximately 10% of GDP and state/local governments are probably adding another 2% via underfunded pension commitments, bond issues, and clever accounting, which brings up right up to parity with Greece, a country that supposedly is in tough shape due to its 12 percent deficit.)

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Factory Navigation System Pricing

by philg

We visited three car dealers today: Mazda, Honda, and Subaru. All three of the manufacturers have priced their factory navigation systems at $2000. Selling a $100 product for $2000 should be yielding tremendous profits for these guys… except that none of the dealers was interested in selling it. “I tell all of my customers to go to BestBuy instead of spending $2000,” the Mazda sales guy noted. Among all three dealers there might have been two or three cars in inventory with factory nav.

We saw no cars with an RFID key; all of the cars had mechanical keys that you turn. We saw no cars with navigation, and certainly none that had replaced the dashboard real estate consumed by the tach and speedo with a flexible LCD screen including nav. We saw no cars with remote start. We saw no cars with any ability to use WiFi or a 3G Internet connection. We saw no cars that could accept a music input via Bluetooth.

I’m wondering now if the inability of mainstream car manufacturers to take advantage of modern electronics is harming their profitability. Since the cars themselves mechanically are not very different from a 5-year-old car, and the electronics are the same as those on a 5-year-old car (unless the consumer wants to spend $5000 extra), a lot of potential customers will decide to keep their 5-year-old car. Since all of companies seem equally unable to do anything interesting with electronics, it might seem that incompetence with electronics/software is not a competitive disadvantage. But the car companies still have to compete with the cars that they made five years ago. And the Chinese and Indian new entrants to the market might prove more innovative.

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How is Google Buzz better than Twitter?

by philg

I’ve started using Google Buzz. I was never a Twitter user, except that someone created a Twitter account that is linked to this Weblog and I have no control over it. I can’t figure out how Google Buzz is better than Twitter.

As I understand it, Twitter can be easily updated and viewed via SMS from a mobile phone. I can’t find any of that in Buzz. Buzz seems to offer a richer environment to present content, hyperlinks, in-line media…. just like a Weblog. But I already have a Weblog. Google Buzz does give me a private Weblog, I guess, but it says that photos are uploaded to a Picasa album. Is that a private album or can anyone then view it?

I’m following most of my friends. Almost none of them have anything interesting to say, it turns out (except you, Andrew; thanks for linking me to this video).

Since I’m already a Gmail user, Google Buzz is convenient and I don’t have to log in separately.

The lack of context-sensitive help is aggravating now that Google offers so many services. If I’m in Buzz and click top right for “Help” I get a generic screen that offers help mostly with Gmail. They have tacked in a link to a video (sounds like it was narrated by one of the South Park creators), but the video is promotional rather than instructional.

I have no idea where I’m going with Buzz. You can follow me in this aimless voyage by searching for “pgreenspun”.

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Review of 2011 Toyota Sienna

by philg

Folks:

I’ve drafted a review of the 2011 Toyota Sienna minivan and would appreciate comments/corrections. The debut of the latest Sienna is interesting because it was almost entirely designed in the U.S. as well as built in the U.S. and the result is almost exactly like something that G.M. would have built. I fear for Toyota shareholders when the new Honda Odyssey is released in the fall.

Thanks in advance.

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