When E-mail was written with a capital E - those were the days!
And a hyphen! :)
E-mail from Bill (1994)
51–60 of 72 posts
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#52>"BILL GATES, aged thirty-eight, is one of the richest men in the country—the richest in 1992, and the second richest, after the investor Warren Buffett, in 1993, with a fortune of six billion one hundred and sixty million dollars, according to Forbes. " Very strange that only just 20-25 years ago, the richest people in the world were "only" worth <7,000,000,000
For comparison: US money supply (M2) was $3400 billion in 1992 and it is $12700 billion now.
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#53It's amazing to get a 90s perspective on the "information highway". Besides advanced home automation, self-driving cars wonder what types of immature technology we're working on today will just be mainstream in the next 2 decades.
Indeed. At university in the late 90s. Most people didn't have a PC. Then Napster. Then almost everyone did within the space of 3 years. Lots of tipping points happened.
So perhaps something similar - a tipping point of convenience. What's now on the edge, but could really change a consumption habit? Holograms? 3D printing?
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
~12 billion inflation-adjusted, but your point stands.
How do you work out 'inflation adjusted' numbers? I've always wondered.
Here's a quick overview, along with a calculator:
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Classic approach would be: You have an inflation rate (measured through a time series of Consumer Price Indices) for a given timeframe and an initial amount of money. Multiply it. It's just to compare purchasing power over time.
Expanding with an example... Really you just want to use the index itself. It represents (in theory) the amount you'd pay for a basket of goods. So say, for example, the Index was at 240 in 1992, but today that same index is 360. So for £100 of 1992 money in today's terms you'd do: 360/240 * 100 = £150 Essentially you just want the ratio of prices for the basket of goods.
That's a great example, thank you. Where do I find the index numbers you refer to? I've googled, but stats are really not my strong point.
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you work out 'inflation adjusted' numbers? I've always wondered.
The Fed provides estimates on the devaluation of the dollar over time. You'll find all sorts of other well known institutions and individuals that provide their own formulas however. The spectrum is pretty wide, from those that agree with the Fed's numbers, to people that think the Fed is intentionally significantly understating inflation.
It's actually (almost certainly for historical reasons) the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) who compute inflation measures, particularly the CPI, but also PPI (consumer and producer price indices, respectively).
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
It also probably makes sense for the Fed not to compute its own inflation index, as its mandate is to manage inflation (and unemployment). Managing a statistic you control might lead to unintended consequences.
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#57“I like Bill. Bill is a smart guy. But I think the problem is that Microsoft has caught the bunny. You know, when you go to the dog track they have that mechanical bunny that makes the dogs run? Well, sometimes a dog is so fast he catches the bunny and then the other dogs don’t run anymore. That’s the situation in the software business today: Bill has caught the bunny. I admire Bill for catching the bunny, but now we can’t have a race. He ought to be loosed from the bunny, to give the other dogs a chance.” Scott McNealy, the head of Sun Microsystems (Interesting analogy with zero sum game mindset...)
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Expanding with an example... Really you just want to use the index itself. It represents (in theory) the amount you'd pay for a basket of goods. So say, for example, the Index was at 240 in 1992, but today that same index is 360. So for £100 of 1992 money in today's terms you'd do: 360/240 * 100 = £150 Essentially you just want the ratio of prices for the basket of goods.
That's a great example, thank you. Where do I find the index numbers you refer to? I've googled, but stats are really not my strong point.
Assuming you're in the US, you could look here: http://www.bls.gov/data/#prices
More information here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index), including info about the appropriate US index to use.
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Fed provides estimates on the devaluation of the dollar over time. You'll find all sorts of other well known institutions and individuals that provide their own formulas however. The spectrum is pretty wide, from those that agree with the Fed's numbers, to people that think the Fed is intentionally significantly understating inflation.
Though it must be said that the latter are cranks who are impossible to take seriously if you look into their claims - basically an MBA who went off the rail with conspiracy theories...
Not just cranks. There are quite a lot of choices as to how you calculate a price index and politics can easily enter in to which choice is taken. I'm not so up on the US index but the UK one tends to weight everyday stuff like the price of a loaf of bread in the supermarket but try coming to London and going to a trendy restaurant and staying in a nice hotel and you'll find those have gone up well above the official rate of inflation.
Re: E-mail from Bill (1994)
#60There are so many gems in this text :) For example: > Designing software—or “writing code,” as people in the trade say
I liked Bill's advice on how to speed up meetings:
“Every time you say ‘thirteen,’ I’ll know that what that means is that all you want to do is what the customer wants. And for every one of these other gibberish slogans, we can also get little numbers. There are a lot of small integers available. We’ll just tighten these meetings up. You know, Cannavino, if you want to talk about how you’re going to save the U.S. educational system, okay, we’ve heard that story. That’s a good fifteen-minute one. That can be number eleven.”