The great feature of an analog microwave oven controller is that setting a time is highly efficient and the effort taken to set the time (at worst) scales linearly with the heating need, which seems like a correct scaling. It has additional features such as easy adding and subtracting of time while in progress.

A digital microwave oven controller, by any measure, is an inferior product. The reasons it might be preferred are (1) to reduce component count and save cost for the manufacturer, (2) to appease consumers with an impression of a product in the “advanced” style, neither of which are excellent reasons.

This is a mistake, and the inefficiency introduced via the digital controller is only ameliorated somewhat by some oddities of the device (enter 99 and the microwave runs for 99 seconds, enter x:99 and the microwave runs for 60x+99 seconds, etc.). So between 60 and 99 seconds, you manage to save a keystroke but no more. (Ok, also between 10 min. and 10 min. 29 seconds.)

This reminds me why I dislike digital book readers, too. They suffer from the analogous problem versus paper books with regard to page turning.

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Somehow, the Chinese market has become a leading indicator:

China’s stock market has foreshadowed moves in global equities the past two years. It peaked on Oct. 16, 2007, two weeks before the MSCI All-Country World Index. The Shanghai index fell 72 percent from its 2007 high and bottomed on Nov. 4, 2008, four months before the MSCI index. The Chinese measure reached its 2009 high on Aug. 4, seven trading days before the global index.

Curious, but not sure if this is statistically significant. If so, the question becomes why. What drives this process. Credit flow?

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