Archive for October, 2008

Small is the new big

The microprocessor industry spent the 80’s and 90’s expanding the size and power of their products. Everyone was braying about higher CPU cycles and all that stuff techies get breathless about.
But now the pendulum has swung the other way. Intel’s latest product is called the ‘Atom‘ and it claims to be its ’smallest chip’ ever.
This [...]

How can so many smart people get stuck with a bad boss?

In several management books, I have read that when you go in for an interview, you should think of it as two way interview. Not only is the company interviewing you, you should be interviewing the company and your future boss.
The people who read the Harvard Business Review-which has cover charge of $15 and contains [...]

FatLoss4Idiots pollutes the Internet

The Internet is getting increasingly polluted with sleazy marketing. Between sites that contain prepackaged articles, sites that claim to be independent review sites but are really just lead-gen (lead generation) sites, a consumer has to be wary of what is out there.
I heard a lot about another weight-loss gimmick called ‘FatLoss4Idiots’. So I went to [...]

Kill with a knife? Go to jail. Kill with a car? No worries.

Vehicular homicide has a trivial punishment in some states, in this case, Kansas. In addition to the societal problems, this causes car insurance rates to rise.
In this case, the defendant ran a red light and killed someone. Unless this reckless driver is taken off the road permanently, by a permanent revocation of his license, he [...]

Bad writing from USA Today: Since when is 10% considered ‘many’?

USA Today has been publishing for over twenty years but has never become an ‘indispensable’ newspaper. If it vanished tomorrow, would anyone care?
This article talks about how the end of cheap credit is a ‘catastrophe’ for dealers, because ‘many’ of them will go out of business. But if you read the article, it says only [...]

Tesla is screwed

I have written previously about how Tesla got a sweetheart deal from starry-eyed, naive San Jose CA politicians, and how a Chinese car company is coming to the USA with a cheap hybrid. I wrote about how their business model had some major flaws.
And now I have been vindicated. Tesla is doing a bunch of [...]

High speed rail in California: a financial folly

California…the land that cars built. And now it wants to build a high speed train system, that runs at 220 MPH. There is a proposition on the Nov 2008 ballot to make the taxpayers pay for this white elephant on wheels. (Update: Here is a writeup in LA Times Editorial by a pro and a [...]

Chinese electric car arrives in the USA, Tesla in trouble

In previous posts I had written about how the electric car company Tesla’s choice to manufacture its own cars in San Jose, CA was a huge mistake. I had also written about how the decision by the City of San Jose to give Tesla all sorts of freebies was a dumb idea.
Today I see an [...]

Sloppy reporting about GM share price

General Motors stock is in a pickle. Everyone has documented how low it has fallen. On Oct 9, 2008, the stock closed at $4.76. All the newspapers are saying how this is the lowest share price for GM since 1950.
What NONE of them mention is what the inflation-adjusted equivalent is. Five bucks in 1950 was [...]

America feeds the world salacious pics

Of all the things America has given the world, few are so life-changing as Cheerleaders. Football and Basketball have cheerleaders, but it is really Baseball that should have cheerleaders. People think Cheerleaders are an American invention, however, cheerleaders have a long history, because it seems that every culture around the world has had maidens in [...]