Xblog

Any sufficiently complicated and extensible C program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of C++… and the C programmers involved will proudly sneer at C++ for its ad hoc design process, poor syntax, dangerous corner cases and bloat.

Some days it seems like California’s principle export is irony. Let’s take our special election. The turn out rate was abominable. Looks like we had a… (wait for it) 23% turnout rate. In Los Angeles it was a truly depressing 17.4%. To look at it another way, the propositions in question either passed or failed based on the opinions of ~12% of the state. So, we’re a representative democracy even when it comes to ballot measures. I’m sorry, but the whole notion of populism kind of falls apart if the population doesn’t show up. Honestly, it is high time that California’s proposition system be either gutted or reformed. Either get rid of them outright, or at least make the barrier to entry much, much higher.

If the pollsters are right, California voters apparently are going to have a weak turnout in a profound display of voter apathy fueled by one of the most outsized cases of denial since the Egyptian river first got its name. It remains unclear what the thinking is, but my current theory is that the vast majority of voters are planning on going down to the beach tomorrow and shoving their heads so deep in the sand the beach is going to appear to be populated largely by a-holes… which will actually be true. There are billions of dollars at stake here, and the only parts of it that don’t come out of our wallets is going to be money that comes out of our children’s wallets. I buy that there isn’t an obviously good choice to be had here, but a lack of will to make the tough decisions is what got us here in the first place. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the measures. I can’t promise that they are terribly well researched, but I have read the legislative analyst’s reports and reflected somewhat. I can’t promise that they are indicative of how I will vote, as I am still doing some reading and thinking. I am mostly writing to get my thoughts organized and perhaps inspire others to add their own thoughts. For what is undoubtedly a more thought out examination, our consult your local paper’s editors.

Of late, DBMS2 has been a source interesting factoids and questionable analysis about the data warehouse industry. I’ve bitten my tongue about some of the articles, because some of them have actually been directly about goings on at my employer, but this interview with Carson Schmidt seems free and clear of that problem while still providing analysis of debatable value. Now, let me preface this by saying AFAIK Carson Schmidt is a brilliant man who likely has forgotten more about OLAP databases than I will ever know. Indeed, knowing this, I get the feeling some of what he is saying has been misinterpreted, taken out of context, or just plain poorly analyzed. That said, I want to apply some critical thinking to the discussion.

You know… I didn’t like this as much as everyone told me I would. Stewart monopolized the conversation way too much, at some point pretty much just throwing out platitudes that had nothing to do with Cramer himself. I have to agree that it felt good and was cathartic to see Stewart wail about the things I’ve been thinking but…

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Fareed Zakaria swooning over Canada. I do think he paints an overly sunny picture and he starts making it sound like almost anything Canadian is inherently great (which I’ll claim is true to my American friends, but amongst ourselves Canadians know better), but the gist of his points are true. Honestly, I think a hybrid of what the US has and Canada has would be a great idea. Have the core of your banking system be large, boring, heavily regulated banks with very conservative leverage ratios; then allow for experimentation and risk taking in separate financial institutions, with the open acknowledgment that these institutions are inherently less reliable. When you think about it, that picture isn’t too far off from where the US was just over a decade ago. Hmmm….

We are well inside the silly season of the national political cycle here, so I thought I’d try to inject some sanity (okay, not really sanity, just my thoughts) in to the hullabaloo. In particular,

It’s hard not to try to read more in to this rather interesting timing of two freakishly-coincidental-occurences at Microsoft and Google.

The headline is Recession hits Silicon Valley as layoffs pile up and yet it fails to fully capture how the landscape has changed so rapidly in the last half a year. I was looking at my career options back then and was shocked to find just how much demand there was in the market. It seemed like the R word wasn’t going to ever be spoken in the tech sector. A few months ago, I was calling friends at Yahoo and other places, and trying to convince them to come work with me. While I wasn’t entirely unsuccessful, it was a non-trivial argument to make (which based on what you read in the press would seem impossible at least for Yahoos). This month…

It’s been far too long since I have posted, and that made me think that my next post ought to be grand and meaningful, which in turn lead to even more time before a post was made. Instead, I’m going to start off with something completely trivial. I thought I ought to point out that after at least a decade of growing violent video game use and declining crime rates, the notion that there is some kind of relationship between the two is getting some serious debunking. It turns out you can let your five year-old play GTA all day without having to worry about them growing up to be hitmen. Note to parents: probably still not a great idea to have a five year-old play GTA all day. ;-)