Andy Grove gave an interesting speech beginning of May, where he criticized the current state of patent usage http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10232355-64.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0.
He compared the patents to mortgage backed securities, derivatives that have moved far away from the actual underlying product. They became a product by themselves but have become less and less useful in their original intent to make the inventor rich and to let the society benefit.
Interesting read.
The other day I’ve noticed an almost perverted development here in the US. We pay state sales taxes(vergleichbar mit der Mehrwertsteuer, aber ans Land, nicht an den Bund), but for Internet orders from out of state businesses, this tax is currently waived. In Texas the sales tax is 8.25% and the saved tax many times off sets the cost for shipping and handling. Last year I found the best prices for some computer components I needed at an online retailer. So I ordered the parts, only to find out at check-out time, that the retailer was actually located in Texas and therefore had to charge the required sales tax for the online order.
When shopping around for a camcorder this week, the same retailer had by far the best price on my selected model – even with the sales tax added. But this time I got a pleasant surprise at check-out: the goods were shipped without sales tax, since they were now coming from a warehouse in Chicago, operated by a subsidy of the retailer. So they’ve figured out a way to avoid the sales tax, by shipping the product half across the continent instead. Shipping was free, too. Makes you wonder what’s wrong with this. The parts are rolling on a truck across the country, instead of being shipped from a 150mile away ware house, last year. The result of the tax rules are not environmentally friendly, but I’m sure operating this way, the retailer is generating more business this way. This feels wrong.
This morning I saw the grass growing – seriously. On my drive to work I pass a stretch of grass that gets mowed regularly. It must have been a couple of days since the crew mowed the patch the last time. When I passed by this morning it just struck me how fast the stems for the blooms have grown out of the grass, now standing one foot tall. Each of these little plants found the conditions just right to grow the blooms with all the energy they had inside of them. One foot tall! Compared to the plant’s size that’s humongous, even when you consider the roots. But it happens every year. Makes me wonder if the plant stores all the molecules to grow the stem inside of the plant, or if it sucks in all the material just in time, when it grows it. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone mad, but this is truly amazing if you think about it. My body doesn’t grow *anything* that size in a couple of days. Not even close!
Earlier this year I promised to add password protection to the blog to share more personal opinions about contentious topics with friends, but not the world. After having checked into how dreamhost.com is providing the wordpress blog service, I’ve found out that I won’t be able to do this with the standard installation. Instead of going custom (and signing up for keeping the install up to date with security patches) I opt to not post these opinions here. Instead you’ll be able to read about my opinions on my www.austinity.com/opinion website location, that I’ll put in place soon. Then you’ll be able to read about my views on:
The drawback of course is, that it’s a one way street and you won’t be able to comment on my essays – a big disadvantage, as the comments are a big reward for the author. It also enables true discussion. But life is not perfect and for now I’ve decided that’s the way it’s going to be. See you at www.austinity.com/opinion.
Today I’d like to share some advice for being a safer driver on the road. Having driven for almost 20 years now without any major accident (of course, I’ll have one tomorrow now) there have been really three major strategies that have kept me safe:
1) Keep your distance
2) Take turns slowly
3) Anticipate – Guess other driver’s intentions
If you limit distractions while at the wheel (no phones, no eating, no turning around to the passengers, no fiddeling with the GPS) adhering to these three very basic principles will make you a safer driver.
Another strategy I’m following comes from analyzing the common case – i.e. your daily commute. If you’re spending 70% of your annual driving on the same stretch of the road, it’s worth analyzing it. Try to think about where the hotspots for accidents are and be alert, when you pass them.
And then there will be the day where you still learn something new … (like yesterday, when that car in front of me slowed unexpectedly to make a legal U-turn, where I haven’t seen a car turning ever before – not in seven years! Anti-lock brakes are wonderful.)
This is going to be a rant. It’s about stock buyback programs. Stock buybacks are these great programs that are loved and demanded by MBA suits and finance folks to trick public companies to spend their money on guess what: buying themselves! Now think about this for a moment: The company that has generated a hard earned profit, tries to put that money to work. And the best way they can come up with is buying more of its own. Cmon’ you’re kidding right? It isn’t investing in more R&D, thinking up new products, it’s not investing in more aggressive marketing of existing products, it’s not investing in the sales force, it’s not buying other companies to grow new business, it’s not paying bonuses to high achieving employees, it’s not spending on shoring up their employees retirement plans. No, it’s spending on shareholder value, the reduction of dilution in stocks to increase earnings per share. And why does this work so beautifully? Because influential investment funds own ridiculously large amounts of the publicly traded stocks and are benefiting disproportionally from such a buyback. “Just give me that money you’re having!” But it gets better: Not only doesn’t have the company a good ideas how to grow its business faster than the competition, it does this kind of buyback usually during good times, when stock prices are high. Granted, nobody can predict the stock price and cost averaging takes care of some inefficiencies, but shouldn’t this kind of investment then continue during bad times, when the stock prices are deflated? You would think. Price averaging works that way. But NO, suddenly cash preservation takes precedence and stock purchases stop during bad times. Latest example: Intel. They’ve been buying their stock all three quarters long, until business turned really sour in Q4 of 2008. So they stopped buying back stock. The stock is 48% down since it’s high in 2008. Not that I think preserving cash is a bad thing during these times. But it’s more important to invest the money in new products or business (you can’t save yourself out of a recession, you need to invest!) to emerge stronger when the next cycle starts. I’m not suggesting Intel isn’t doing that. It is. But it’s also having a stock buyback program because it fell slave to the fund managers. I’m convinced that stock buybacks weren’t a good idea to spend your money on in first place. Not in good times, and not in bad times. If you can’t find management to grow the business faster than investing in their own stock, get rid of them, is what I say. They’re out of ideas or have fallen slaves to their investors. But IMO the reason we have so many buyback programs is that that’s really all the MBA suits understand of the companies’ underlying businesses they invest in. And it’s the fastest way known to them to extract money. It’s easy to ask for, especially if you own huge chunks of stocks. So give me more of your hard earned money!
Aging is a weird thing. For some reason the self perceived age never seems to change much. Maybe that’s because perception of one’s own mistakes are felt so amplified. And experienced (read old) people don’t make mistakes, right? I feel so horribly stupid at times that it scares me. Sorry, I won’t share any embarrassing examples here. Maybe some other time. I can’t believe I’m 37 now although I still think (and am convinced) I’m twenty years younger (on a side note: why do I always have to fill out my date of birth, current age and current date on every form I fill out? To form designer: Can you say redundancy?). I still remember when I was 17 how old I thought 40 year old people appeared to be. No I’m almost that age myself. This is very confusing. Now people expect me to be a responsible parent. Instead I catch myself enjoying playing with Rohan’s toys. Did anyone say midlife crisis? No way. I hope I’ll grow up soon. From MrsM I hear I’m not alone with that hope…
It sounds weird, but I believe I had a life changing event earlier this year, and I’m not talking about our baby we had recently.
Sometimes during our last vacation (Hawaii) I decided to allow a little bit more consumerism into my life. After flipping through the pages of “Wired” magazine I decided to give the publication a shot for a year. This magazine just makes you want to buy gadgets… The subscription process usually takes a while and I had already forgotten about it when the first issue arrived in my mailbox. I was a bit underwhelmed to say the least and didn’t think much of that issue (March 08). The next month’s issue arrived just shortly after and I tried to find the April’s fools article. Sure enough there it was: a portrait of Ray Kurzweil, a pattern recognition scientist and futurist, who has published various outrageous books, that describe ideas that are way off from what we would consider mainstream. So here it was, the dude has published another book in 2005 about the nearing singularity (machines take over the world). The article went on to describe how he is also running a quantitative analysis hedge fund which had made him rich. Sure, that’s probably, why he’s still working, too, I thought. Not stopping with his scientific accomplishments and various patents, he became a venture capitalist and also invented a life prolonging new diet: The 10% solution. Sure, thanks, I’ve read enough. Tomorrow I’m going to cancel my subscription.
But over night I was thinking about all his claimed fame and accomplishments and I remember having been fascinated by his first book a couple of years ago. So I decided to google some of the data in the portrait and one by one all yielded credible results. The hedge fund exists and is well, the books are all published and can be ordered at Amazon and his speech quotes were all available. Strange.
So I went ahead and looked up his ideas on the dieting, since I thought that was the least credible claim to fame. He isn’t a physician after all and has a background in engineering. But his scientific background enabled him to process humongous amounts of readily available medical data from studies and draw conclusions. Interestingly he addressed many of the questions that had been nagging me in my head over the last couple of years: Are there any populations on earth that follow a healthy diet that reduces the risk of heart disease? What foods are the least favorable in our diet? Is our body built to process the provided western diet, or was it originally built for an entirely different set of foods? After having read a bit online, I decided to order a copy of his book. It arrived two days later in the mail. I began reading. And then I got really sucked in. It was all so logical and he used the engineering language and reasoning to convince me that he’s onto something by the time I reached page 30.
In a nutshell he claims that all of our civilization diseases (High Cholesterol, heart attack, atherosclerosis, diabetes II) disappear, when you’re following a diet that doesn’t provide more than 10% of all provided calories from fat. A typical American is closer to 40%! Calorie intake should also be controlled somewhat, but in essence the fat is the culprit. In addition he obviously suggests an exercise schedule to get our routine more in line with what our bodies were built for.
The diet change is non gradual and in order to achieve the 10%, a complete change of eating patterns is required. Interestingly, this is not too difficult for me as it turns out. Throughout my life I already underwent two major changes in eating habits: the first time when I moved to the US and had to adapt to the American food, and then when Meera and I got married and I got exposed to the Indian cuisine. Both changes were significant, yet enjoyable in the long run. Changing to the 10% rule is more a mix and match between all food styles known to me using only the low fat ingredients. With the rich vegetarian Indian cuisine, this exercise becomes almost too easy!
So here I am changing my eating habits all over again, and you find me in weird places like Whole Foods or Central Market studying the labels of new food groups that I’ve never tried before. In the beginning it’s a lot of learning and trying, but over time I’m sure shopping and choosing will become second nature. I’m having a lot of fun going through this change right now. Since I’ve started the diet my body weight has dropped from 185lb to 155, dipping down to 152 when I was sick. At 6″1 that makes for a body mass index of somewhere around 20.4, which makes me quite happy. Thanks Ray – this world needs some extraordinary people like you!
Did I mention I have a fascination for cars? Well, I do. So far I’ve convinced myself that buying new cars every so often is a bad idea, since it’s the fastest way known to mankind to destroy money (that was before we learned about Detroit’s big three, that were apparently able to burn through more money faster than the buyers of their products). So I’ve managed to always buy used cars so far. I also found that a good way to curb my desire for new wheels is not to subscibe to any car magazines. But off and on I see a car on the road that really catches my eye. The last time this happened, was when I saw the current BMW 3-series coupe for the first time. After all these awful Bangle designs, how could it be that such a beauty made it to production? Was bangle on vacation, or maybe on drugs? In any case the result was stunning! So maybe, just maybe if the Diva (that’s how MrsM calls my current car) dies eventually, my next car might just be a 3-series coupe. But by then I’m sure another car has caught my eye. Did anyone say Cayman?