Left Oblique

Selling you the same thing for more money.

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:57:05 -0400

So, CNN has this article on how the new 15" MacBook will have a "retina display".

Doing some back-of-the-envelope calculation, using typical viewing distances, and based on the iPhone 4 and specs for the upcoming iPad 3, I'd guess this would put the display somewhere in the realm of 2048x1152.

That's nice and all, but there are plenty of 15" laptops out there with 1920x1080 - and have been for years. And while it's just a bit less than the figure above, it has the advantage of being the native resolution of HDTV and Blu-Ray video streams, which means that TV and movies will look better (no scaling or blurring or letterbox borders) than on an odd resolution "retina display".

I just wish Apple didn't try to pull these gimmicks to make their products seem better than they really are. For heaven's sake, my phone has a higher resolution than my wife's iPhone 4S, and it's exactly 720p to boot, which means it's perfect for watching HD movies and sports. "Retina display" my big ol' butt...

Just another symptom of the problem.

Dave — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:03:16 -0400

An editorial by Adam Hartung in Forbes Magazine just listed the "Worst 5 CEOs in America" and guess who tops the list? Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. Hartung's biggest complaint? Microsoft's share price is down from $60 in 2000 to $30 today.

What happened? Pretty much just this: the dot-com bubble burst. All tech stocks were hyper-inflated in 2000. That Microsoft has survived and is trading at only half that value today (while many of its competitors have gone under) speaks to the company's stability. Microsoft also pays dividends to shareholders, something not reflected in Hartung's analysis.

But besides that, what is the columnist really saying? A CEO's worth should be measured by the value of his company's stock, right now. But isn't that the problem? Too much risk; too much short-term thinking? It's what drove the dot-com bubble, and the housing bubble, and the derivatives bubble. It's what sank the big banks and it's what is killing J.P. Morgan-Chase as we speak. Shouldn't we be rewarding companies with stable stock prices and reliable dividends? They're the ones which are creating long-term value for their shareholders - and reliable jobs for their employees. They're the ones who are keeping the economy afloat, not venture capital firms and hedge funds.

12% annual growth is unrealistic and unsustainable. The Forbes guys have got to pull their heads out of their butts and stop living in 2006.

Incentives

Dave — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:26:05 -0400

So there's a new blog by game designer Liam Burke, whose Dog Eat Dog I intend to buy at some point. He's got an interesting post on moral choices in games - he argues that if you want to explore morality, rewarding good behavior is actually counterproductive.

He's right, but the principle doesn't apply everywhere. In a game where rewards are largely mechanical (World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons) players will to do the expedient thing regardless of its rectitude. It's only in games where the player can relate to the narrative and characters (Burke's example of Bioshock is probably only a border-case) that you have the kind of real moral conflict that makes the point relevant.

Dragon Age: Origins is probably a much better example - and a game that wholeheartedly follows Burke's strategy (spoilers follow).