IMO, a country's participation in international fora or treaties is a voluntary act by its government. If the government is democratically elected, I don't see anything undemocratic in this. Yes, sometimes such decisions are taken under coercive pressure. But that doesn't make it an unvoluntary act.
Example: The government coerces me into driving within the speed limits, by threatening to fine me if I don't, put me in jail if I don't pay the fine, and ultimately use violence if I refuse to go to jail. That doesn't make me unfree, and my driving speed is a voluntary act.
t is interesting that you mention the ICC and Kyoto Protocol. Both treaties are not actively supported by the current Bush administration. The latter treaty, despite whatever popular support it may have elsewhere in the world, is being actively undermined by the US state department.
Yes, funny, that, isn't it. I seriously prefer the US when it is building international institutions such as the WTO, than when it is blocking them (such as the ICC). I am concerned that the logic behind "going it alone" will be a self-fulfilling prophecy for the US. As it alienates its allies, the perception that US is on its own will naturally become true.
Regardless of whether the US is a hegemon, an empire, or hyperpuissance, the fact that US policies are translated into political control over persons who have no say in the matter should be of grave concern to USians. It matters not how benevolent this rule may be-- the ruled must be given the opportunity to choose for themselves.
So, in your opinion, nobody should be able to exert influence over anybody else, except if democratically elected to do so? That does it for the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and most other international institutions. Don't think for a minute that the creation of those were not subject to a lot of "power play" where some governments lured and coerced others (and don't think for a minute that the US is the only country playing that game - all major countries do).
Sound like a logical argument? What is unusual and what is bad or immoral are two entirely different questions; "it's always been like this" and "everyone does it" are no moral arguments at all; and your number (3) is a textbook example of a strawman.
You are right, the two comments on the situation being "not unusual" were not moral arguments, and not intended as such. They supported the statement "..., this situation is not unusual,...".
As to the morality of weilding economic power, a full exposition would take an entire book, and I suspect we would still disagree. Let me just remark that decisionmakers in international politics face decisions which are very complex, time-constrained and information-constrained. The scope of moral dilemmas is such that there will probably always be ample opportunity to condemn the policy on moral grounds. A pragmatic way of assessing the morality of a policy is to make a comparative utilitarian judgement call (in other words: Is the policy doing more good and/or less harm than the typical alternatives?). This method is justified by the following: If every decision-maker made policies that were better than those of others, the world would gradually become a better place.
From the point of view of "theoretical ethics", the statement in my original comment was indeed a strawman. However, the field of theoretical ethics is very hard to apply to complex issues in international politics. That is why more pragmatic theories of morality are applied, such as the just war tradition....did we stray off topic now...?;-)
Mr. Wade's point is not very interesting. To rephrase his opinion: (1) America has a lot of influence in the world, (2) it uses it further its own interests, and (3) the power is projected [also] via monetary/financial institutions.
Brief comments on these: (1) Great powers have existed in most of civilized history, and examples of one-country hegemonies are not unusual. (2) All countries try to further their own aims. (3) Power projected in this way is usually preferable to military power. Thus, the situation Wade discribes is neither unusual, nor necessarily bad or immoral.
It is quite possible to argue that compared to all other hegemons, America has done less wrong and more good with its power. It is very easy to imagine worse hegemonies - imagine what e.g. a maoist Chinese, marxist Soviet or islamic Iranian hegemony would be like. I personally disapprove of major parts of American foreign policy, but I also try to be realistic about it and its alternatives.
Btw, it is wrong to use the word "empire" in the sense Mr. Wade does. My Oxford Learner's Dictionary defines an empire as "Group of countries under a single supreme authority" (my emphasis). Taking the word 'supreme' out of the definition would make it include the UN, the WHO, the International Olympic Committee etc. etc. The US empire at present covers the American homeland, Iraq and nothing else.
A very simple way to think about this issue would be the following mental model: Imagine that there are two kinds of labor - skilled and unskilled. Production happens in "quanta" of (say) 1 skilled and 3 unskilled workers. The economy's workforce is in balance if wages are such that 25% of the workforce get an education (to become skilled).
Now, you can choose how to view the "robot case": If you look at this statically, you see a problem. The problem is of course that if robots substitute for unskilled labor, you have a huge imbalance that will push the wage difference up (to change the skilled/unskilled ratio). Furthermore, the period before the ratio changes, you get a lot of unemployment.
However, you can look at it as a terrific opportunity. Because the new "quanta" of production consist of one skilled worker + 3 units of robotic work, you can actually quadruple the production with the same workforce. If all your workers are skilled, you can have as many "production quanta" as you have workers, rather than one per 4 workers. Thus, GDP per capita increases by 300% and makes the inhabitants of the country rich.
According to classical economics, this will happen "automatically" after a period of adjustment, as getting an education will be critical to every worker's economic future. The period of adjustment might be brutal, though, as not-yet-skilled workers experience wage drops and unemployment. However, recent unemployement among university graduates in both the US and Europe indicates that the economies are already ahead of this trend, and that the skilled/unskilled ratio is too high, not too low in the labor pool.
In the very simple model above, one crucial part is missing: All those unskilled jobs that simply can't be performed by robots. As babyboomers get old, huge amounts of labor will go to care for them. The interpersonal element of caregiving precludes robots from these jobs (eventhough robots might make them more efficient/less labor intensive). The service industries will always need people (most people will prefer a person to wait their table or give them a massage). And so on, and so forth...
These "live people only" sectors will ensure continued demand for "manual" labor. As caregiving in particular is about to explode, it will most likely pick up much of the labor freed up by robots. Furthermore, it is likely that we overestimate the pace of introduction of robots (as we have overestimated the pick-up rate of almost every new technology). Thus, I don't share the dire outlook painted in the article. The future has a funny tendency to look after itself.
That would make sense, if you don't compare what they saved (in running lean) vs. what they lose (in one blackout). In short, I bet "unreasonable risk" you pose, would be, financially reasonable if it only happened occasionally, and that's probably what they calculated.
You are perfectly right to assume that this calculation is made. However, utilities give customers very strict SLAs with next-to-no tolerance for downtime. Furthermore, a blackout like this is bound to be followed by regulatory decisions that will cost the utilities dearly.
In other words: The cost to the utilities of this thing will be predictably astronomical. Even though they probably did the "risk vs. cost" analysis, they must have found that "reckless" costcutting would not be worth it if it increased the risk of a catastrophic event like this.
Innovations are beneficient as long as they provide some benefit (usually economic, or at least measurable in economic terms, such as my pleasure from blasting Outcasts in Freelancer, which I value at approx. $50/hr).
In a well-functioning economy, consumers and firms provide feedback to the innovator via their wallets - a good innovation increases consumer benefit and/or reduces producer cost (and some of this benefit can be reaped by the innovator in terms of profit). This feedback loop is essential and repetitive - lesser innovations combine, stack and mutate with every iteration, until true and substantial innovation is achieved.
However, in the bubble economy, the feedback provided by consumers through their purchasing behavior was ignored, because "profits would come in the future". Thereby the companies were sending "false" feedback to each other, and tremendous resources were sunk into irrelevant and/or unviable innovation. Now that "the economic laws of gravity are back, expect innovations to be more useful to the real world.
If you are destroyed and then replicated, you are effectively dead. ... So basically we concluded that teleporting an object by replication/destruction would be helpful to everyone except the object in question.
Not necessarily. You assume that there is a "real me" and a "copy-of-me". However, if the replication process is perfect, then both the individuals that come out of the other end will for all practical purposes be me - look like me, feel like me, think like me, remember the things I remember and all of the other characteristics that together constitute me.
The crux is, as you point out, the destruction of "the original copy" in the teleportation process. The implicit point in your argument is that the death of one of the copies matters. My question to that point is: To whom? Me-before-the-teleportation doesn't care - I will live on in the copy. The teleported copy is alive, so it doesn't matter to it. "The original copy" is "dead", and didn't mind before it happened.
So it all ends up being very philosophical: Does it matter to be dead per se, or is it the absence of a continued existence (such as in the form of a copy) that is wrong about being dead? I would say the latter, and therefore you may teleport me as soon as your device is 99,99999% secure (or even less, if the destination is an exiting place).
I don't think any army has ever been overly concerned with civilian casualties.
That sounds a bit naïve. Even if you assume that the Army leadership are unethical and unlawful, there are plenty of military reasons for being concerned with civilian casualties. As an example, military operations always serve political purposes, and civilian casualties are bad for politics (at least in democratic countries). Therefore, collateral damage detracts from military success.
It is, of course, also possible to debate the ethical standards of military leadership. Personally, I believe that there are great individual differences (as in the rest of society). Some generals are ruthless and "realist", other let their military decisions be influenced by humanitarian and ethical considerations.
Why would SearchKing sue, when the case is so thin?
Well, the press coverage and discussions that the suit will generate will be worth many times SearchKing's legal costs. Clearly this is a PR stunt. A good idea (from a business point of view) - I would probably have done the same in their shoes.
For Google, it's not too bad a deal either. By choosing them for this suit, SearchKing reinforce the perception of Google as the predominant search engine. Furthermore, Google's legal costs will be covered by SearchKing, either in a settlement, or through the court ruling.
In other words, everybody wins. And the lawyers get rich, as usual...
The fundamental problem at hand is that most projects need to combine "product" or "business" considerations with considerations of technical feasibility and trade-offs. Projects managed with "product" understanding but poor technical knowledge end up late, expensive, suboptimal, and with frustrated programmers. Projects managed with technical understanding but limited insight into the business objectives and considerations end up spending a lot of resources solving low-value-added problems, things that come up during the project are often poorly evaluated, and (notably) those projects frequently err with respect to ensuring a good adaptation to the context in which the technology will be applied (organization, processes and people).
This problem is greatly aggrevated by the fact that "product PMs" tend to believe that they know enough about technical implementation, and techies tend to believe that the "product" part of the job is "piece of cake" compared to the technical challenges of the projects.
Another complicating factor is that project management is a discipline of its own, and anyone without some training in this will be a dabbler and probably underperform. Unfortunately, in my experience, "product" people tend to have a stronger background in this field than technical people do.
The best solution in my experience is to have a "product person" who has final authority in the project, but to have a technical PM whose job it is to execute that persons specifications according to agreed deadlines and budgets (i.e. the technical PM is the one who schedules activities, creates fabulous GANTT charts, pushes for deliveries etc.). I have, however, seen non-tech people do well in the hands-on PM roll. In these cases those PMs have had the brains to understand enough of the tech part to be relevant in their role.
Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?
It's pure math, really. There is a significant, steady stream of new businesses being created, even if you only count the ones that make it past the infancy stage. Additional ones are being created buy spin-offs/spin-outs/demergers/whateveryoucallits.
In a country with a relatively stable population, this can only mean one of two things: Either the average size of firms must be decreasing, or a number of firms must be disappearing. The strongest of these two factors will of course be the latter. Given that the two ways in which companies can disappear are bankruptcies/liquidations and mergers, you could say that mergers are good. Even if a merger is followed by layoffs etc., a company remains to pay severance packages and face other liabilities. Furthermore, a merger is usually less wasteful than closing a company, as valuable assets such as brand names are more likely to be preserved.
In a dynamic world with quick changes in technologies and customer preferences, continuous restructuring is necessary and desirable. Mergers are important mechanisms of such restructuring, alongside entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, strategic alliances etc.
This is not evolution, it is individual learning. At least at the robot-individual level, there are no random mutations and there is no death - both vital aspects of evolution.
If all you have to do to get me to stop leaving burn bags of dog crap on your front porch is to ask me, does that make it ok for me to leave those shitbombs until you say otherwise? (With the understanding that I'm free to start up again in a months time unless you keep repeating your request?)
They aren't leaving them on your doorstep, it's their own. You just insist on going there...
The rationale for a common currency
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There are two main reasons for implementing the common currency - political and economic. Although the economic might be important (think in hundred billion dollar terms of potential efficiencies), the political have been the most important motivation.
The political goals behind the Euro are, of course, the often-cited "ever closer union". Many people think that a "United States of Europe" model, much along the lines of the USA, would be a good thing. Such a development goes hand in hand with tearing down the barriers for commerce, travel, cultural exchange and relocation of people and businesses. The whole EU Common Market project has been doing this explicitly for the last 6 years, and implicitly since the eighties. There are many arguments for and against such a European Federations, the most vocal opponents cite nationalism or the loss of local governance/influence, whilst the advocates usually talk about economic benefits, European identity and the need for transnational coordination to tackle global environmental issues etc.
The economic goals are basically to remove wasteful practices and increase productivity through increased competition and specialization. To deal with those individually:
Wasteful practices: A lot of resources in Europe are used for tackling currency translations of different sorts, ranging from exchange bureaus to expensive accounting consultants and accounting software development. This might sound marginal, and it is indeed way beyond one percent of GDP, but when applied to economies of this size it still adds up to triple-digit billions (Euro or US, take your pick). There is also a lot of (costly) risk taking will be removed.
Increased competition: Especially in the smaller countries, local markets can be so small that they don't support enough suppliers (or buyers) to ensure good competition. This leads to monopolistic behavior, and hurts the economies in terms of lost production and mis-allocation of production resources. By removing barriers to cross-border tenders, competition (and thereby efficiency) is increased.
Specialization: Because the Germans are better at making cars than the Swiss, while the Swiss are better at making cheese, it makes sense if the Swiss make cheese for the Germans and the Germans make cars for the Swiss. This is called specialization, and occurs within economies as well as between them (in fact, specialization is the main reason why e.g. currency, the corporation and industrialization have been so important for the economic development in our history). Specialization between economies is realized through trade, which will be facilitated by the common currency.
The cons: The economic cons are well-known, but hard to quantify. Basically, the main problem is that with a common currency comes (by definition) a common monetary policy. Monetary policy needs to be adjusted to the business cycle. The cost of the common currency will be incurred when different policies are needed in different parts of the EU, e.g. if boom in Ireland requires a contractionary policy (high interest rates) while recession in Germany requires stimulation (low interest rates). This has been experienced by the US, when Chicago (car industry) was in recession while California (high-tech etc.) was booming, and the Fed had no way to respond to this situation.
The gravity of this problem is determined by how different the business cycle is within the common currency region, which again is determined by the mobility of resources (notably including labor resources). It is widely accepted that European workers are, at least at present, less likely to move to other countries than Americans are to move to other states. Therefore, this problem is likely to be bigger in Europe than in the US. Whether this will eat up all the economic benefits is not predictable with present analytic tools, and only time will show. Most economists seem to be in favor of the Euro, though.
Then again, Tolkien didn't think what he wrote would ever appeal to anyone and needed tremendous push from his family and the editor in order to ever publish the thing. He wasn't really a great judge of his audience, was he?
My personal guess is that if he got to see the joy and excitement the film is inevitably going to spread to kids and adults alike, he would feel it is a good thing. Of course he would still grumble about characters and plot details lost - all writers do.
>But at the end of the day you're still working to make someone else rich.
What a weird way to look at it. You get a salary and a cut of the upside, but have a problem with the fact that someone else makes money with you. This must mean that you either believe:
1. That the "someone elses" in question doesn't contribute anything to the equation, or
2. That the "someone elses" in question shouldn't be rewarded for their contribution
If 1., then I suggest creating your own employment by creating a business plan and putting up your own money as risk capital. If that isn't a contribution, then it should be painless to come up with it. That way you are free of your "slavery" (but, I would presume, working much harder and making much less, at least initially).
If 2., then you are basically advocating the "slavery" of the other participants of the business you are working for. They are contributing, but you want to deny them a reward for their contribution.
If the argument is that any kind of contractual working relationship is "slavery", no matter whether compensation is fair or not, then it is hard to see how we could abolish slavery. It would have to be either by making all companies and organizations cooperatives where people work voluntarily and without commitment, or a return to a society where the biggest coordinated unit is one person. Both of these are utopian visions that could only be realised at great loss to standards of living, technological development etc.
A vol number of 98% is meaningless: 20% vol means a stock will go up or down by less than 20% two out of three years. 98% implies a distribution so non-normal (i.e. companies going out of business left and right, or growing like rabbits) as to be mere math junk.
This is correct only if you calculate volatility on the basis of a normal distribution function. However, it is customary (especially in academia) to express the vol on a log-normal distribution basis. That way you can have unlimited volatility without getting the assymetry problem described.
That having been said, I agree with the critique of the article. It does not surprise me at all that employees overvalue stock options - in most startups the management probably does the same. The reason: The people working at startups HAVE TO be unrealistically optimistic about their company's future, otherwise they cannot succeed. Remember than 9 out of 10 startups don't survive the entrepreneurial phase...
Wireless data services will give us tons of new opportunities, albeit more slowly than we would like.
Clearly the initial hype has led to overinvestment and unrealistic expectations about the wireless internet. Furthermore, putting "internet" in its nickname has created expectations of having an experience that resembles the current HTML, fixed-terminal, Netscape/IE rendered WWW.
However, in a pretty short time, we have gone from having nothing in this area, to having a number of wireless data services that people think are worthwhile. Personally I've been grateful even for the 28.8K connection I got from my laptop via "high-speed" GSM data during frequent train trips. Consumers in Europe, Japan and the Philipines have taken off totally on mobile messaging, and they don't seem to care about the limited input interface. Tweaking maximum value out of limited technology, companies in Scandinavia are offering a wide range of services from dating/matchmaking to event info on the SMS protocol (services that are often based on the same content databases that are fed to their WWW sites).
I find the article very static in its views of both the internet and the society. It presents only what is needed to bring the net in its present form to today's devices in today's society. For instance, there is limited credibility to the "social stigma" theory of the barriers to wearable computing devices (such as the "cyborg" goggles). As with any new technology there will be an initial phase where the main market frowns upon it, while only a limited group of innovators embrace it. When the usefulness and fashion value of the thing is established, the rest will follow. This initial inertia is actually a good thing for the technology, as it allows the product to mature a bit with the early adopters before it hits main market.
pk
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are right that SCO know what they're doing. They might even know that their chances are slim.
What is the value of a 5% probability of making ten billion dollars? Answer: Half a billion dollars. Hey, that's money, too...
IMO, a country's participation in international fora or treaties is a voluntary act by its government. If the government is democratically elected, I don't see anything undemocratic in this. Yes, sometimes such decisions are taken under coercive pressure. But that doesn't make it an unvoluntary act.
Example: The government coerces me into driving within the speed limits, by threatening to fine me if I don't, put me in jail if I don't pay the fine, and ultimately use violence if I refuse to go to jail. That doesn't make me unfree, and my driving speed is a voluntary act.
t is interesting that you mention the ICC and Kyoto Protocol. Both treaties are not actively supported by the current Bush administration. The latter treaty, despite whatever popular support it may have elsewhere in the world, is being actively undermined by the US state department.
Yes, funny, that, isn't it. I seriously prefer the US when it is building international institutions such as the WTO, than when it is blocking them (such as the ICC). I am concerned that the logic behind "going it alone" will be a self-fulfilling prophecy for the US. As it alienates its allies, the perception that US is on its own will naturally become true.
Regardless of whether the US is a hegemon, an empire, or hyperpuissance, the fact that US policies are translated into political control over persons who have no say in the matter should be of grave concern to USians. It matters not how benevolent this rule may be-- the ruled must be given the opportunity to choose for themselves.
So, in your opinion, nobody should be able to exert influence over anybody else, except if democratically elected to do so? That does it for the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and most other international institutions. Don't think for a minute that the creation of those were not subject to a lot of "power play" where some governments lured and coerced others (and don't think for a minute that the US is the only country playing that game - all major countries do).
Sound like a logical argument? What is unusual and what is bad or immoral are two entirely different questions; "it's always been like this" and "everyone does it" are no moral arguments at all; and your number (3) is a textbook example of a strawman.
...did we stray off topic now...? ;-)
You are right, the two comments on the situation being "not unusual" were not moral arguments, and not intended as such. They supported the statement "..., this situation is not unusual,...".
As to the morality of weilding economic power, a full exposition would take an entire book, and I suspect we would still disagree. Let me just remark that decisionmakers in international politics face decisions which are very complex, time-constrained and information-constrained. The scope of moral dilemmas is such that there will probably always be ample opportunity to condemn the policy on moral grounds. A pragmatic way of assessing the morality of a policy is to make a comparative utilitarian judgement call (in other words: Is the policy doing more good and/or less harm than the typical alternatives?). This method is justified by the following: If every decision-maker made policies that were better than those of others, the world would gradually become a better place.
From the point of view of "theoretical ethics", the statement in my original comment was indeed a strawman. However, the field of theoretical ethics is very hard to apply to complex issues in international politics. That is why more pragmatic theories of morality are applied, such as the just war tradition.
Mr. Wade's point is not very interesting. To rephrase his opinion: (1) America has a lot of influence in the world, (2) it uses it further its own interests, and (3) the power is projected [also] via monetary/financial institutions.
Brief comments on these: (1) Great powers have existed in most of civilized history, and examples of one-country hegemonies are not unusual. (2) All countries try to further their own aims. (3) Power projected in this way is usually preferable to military power. Thus, the situation Wade discribes is neither unusual, nor necessarily bad or immoral.
It is quite possible to argue that compared to all other hegemons, America has done less wrong and more good with its power. It is very easy to imagine worse hegemonies - imagine what e.g. a maoist Chinese, marxist Soviet or islamic Iranian hegemony would be like. I personally disapprove of major parts of American foreign policy, but I also try to be realistic about it and its alternatives.
Btw, it is wrong to use the word "empire" in the sense Mr. Wade does. My Oxford Learner's Dictionary defines an empire as "Group of countries under a single supreme authority" (my emphasis). Taking the word 'supreme' out of the definition would make it include the UN, the WHO, the International Olympic Committee etc. etc. The US empire at present covers the American homeland, Iraq and nothing else.
A very simple way to think about this issue would be the following mental model: Imagine that there are two kinds of labor - skilled and unskilled. Production happens in "quanta" of (say) 1 skilled and 3 unskilled workers. The economy's workforce is in balance if wages are such that 25% of the workforce get an education (to become skilled).
Now, you can choose how to view the "robot case": If you look at this statically, you see a problem. The problem is of course that if robots substitute for unskilled labor, you have a huge imbalance that will push the wage difference up (to change the skilled/unskilled ratio). Furthermore, the period before the ratio changes, you get a lot of unemployment.
However, you can look at it as a terrific opportunity. Because the new "quanta" of production consist of one skilled worker + 3 units of robotic work, you can actually quadruple the production with the same workforce. If all your workers are skilled, you can have as many "production quanta" as you have workers, rather than one per 4 workers. Thus, GDP per capita increases by 300% and makes the inhabitants of the country rich.
According to classical economics, this will happen "automatically" after a period of adjustment, as getting an education will be critical to every worker's economic future. The period of adjustment might be brutal, though, as not-yet-skilled workers experience wage drops and unemployment. However, recent unemployement among university graduates in both the US and Europe indicates that the economies are already ahead of this trend, and that the skilled/unskilled ratio is too high, not too low in the labor pool.
In the very simple model above, one crucial part is missing: All those unskilled jobs that simply can't be performed by robots. As babyboomers get old, huge amounts of labor will go to care for them. The interpersonal element of caregiving precludes robots from these jobs (eventhough robots might make them more efficient/less labor intensive). The service industries will always need people (most people will prefer a person to wait their table or give them a massage). And so on, and so forth...
These "live people only" sectors will ensure continued demand for "manual" labor. As caregiving in particular is about to explode, it will most likely pick up much of the labor freed up by robots. Furthermore, it is likely that we overestimate the pace of introduction of robots (as we have overestimated the pick-up rate of almost every new technology). Thus, I don't share the dire outlook painted in the article. The future has a funny tendency to look after itself.
That would make sense, if you don't compare what they saved (in running lean) vs. what they lose (in one blackout). In short, I bet "unreasonable risk" you pose, would be, financially reasonable if it only happened occasionally, and that's probably what they calculated.
You are perfectly right to assume that this calculation is made. However, utilities give customers very strict SLAs with next-to-no tolerance for downtime. Furthermore, a blackout like this is bound to be followed by regulatory decisions that will cost the utilities dearly.
In other words: The cost to the utilities of this thing will be predictably astronomical. Even though they probably did the "risk vs. cost" analysis, they must have found that "reckless" costcutting would not be worth it if it increased the risk of a catastrophic event like this.
Innovations are beneficient as long as they provide some benefit (usually economic, or at least measurable in economic terms, such as my pleasure from blasting Outcasts in Freelancer, which I value at approx. $50/hr).
In a well-functioning economy, consumers and firms provide feedback to the innovator via their wallets - a good innovation increases consumer benefit and/or reduces producer cost (and some of this benefit can be reaped by the innovator in terms of profit). This feedback loop is essential and repetitive - lesser innovations combine, stack and mutate with every iteration, until true and substantial innovation is achieved.
However, in the bubble economy, the feedback provided by consumers through their purchasing behavior was ignored, because "profits would come in the future". Thereby the companies were sending "false" feedback to each other, and tremendous resources were sunk into irrelevant and/or unviable innovation. Now that "the economic laws of gravity are back, expect innovations to be more useful to the real world.
If you are destroyed and then replicated, you are effectively dead.
...
So basically we concluded that teleporting an object by replication/destruction would be helpful to everyone except the object in question.
Not necessarily. You assume that there is a "real me" and a "copy-of-me". However, if the replication process is perfect, then both the individuals that come out of the other end will for all practical purposes be me - look like me, feel like me, think like me, remember the things I remember and all of the other characteristics that together constitute me.
The crux is, as you point out, the destruction of "the original copy" in the teleportation process. The implicit point in your argument is that the death of one of the copies matters. My question to that point is: To whom? Me-before-the-teleportation doesn't care - I will live on in the copy. The teleported copy is alive, so it doesn't matter to it. "The original copy" is "dead", and didn't mind before it happened.
So it all ends up being very philosophical: Does it matter to be dead per se, or is it the absence of a continued existence (such as in the form of a copy) that is wrong about being dead? I would say the latter, and therefore you may teleport me as soon as your device is 99,99999% secure (or even less, if the destination is an exiting place).
I don't think any army has ever been overly concerned with civilian casualties.
That sounds a bit naïve. Even if you assume that the Army leadership are unethical and unlawful, there are plenty of military reasons for being concerned with civilian casualties. As an example, military operations always serve political purposes, and civilian casualties are bad for politics (at least in democratic countries). Therefore, collateral damage detracts from military success.
It is, of course, also possible to debate the ethical standards of military leadership. Personally, I believe that there are great individual differences (as in the rest of society). Some generals are ruthless and "realist", other let their military decisions be influenced by humanitarian and ethical considerations.
Why would SearchKing sue, when the case is so thin?
Well, the press coverage and discussions that the suit will generate will be worth many times SearchKing's legal costs. Clearly this is a PR stunt. A good idea (from a business point of view) - I would probably have done the same in their shoes.
For Google, it's not too bad a deal either. By choosing them for this suit, SearchKing reinforce the perception of Google as the predominant search engine. Furthermore, Google's legal costs will be covered by SearchKing, either in a settlement, or through the court ruling.
In other words, everybody wins. And the lawyers get rich, as usual...
The fundamental problem at hand is that most projects need to combine "product" or "business" considerations with considerations of technical feasibility and trade-offs. Projects managed with "product" understanding but poor technical knowledge end up late, expensive, suboptimal, and with frustrated programmers. Projects managed with technical understanding but limited insight into the business objectives and considerations end up spending a lot of resources solving low-value-added problems, things that come up during the project are often poorly evaluated, and (notably) those projects frequently err with respect to ensuring a good adaptation to the context in which the technology will be applied (organization, processes and people).
This problem is greatly aggrevated by the fact that "product PMs" tend to believe that they know enough about technical implementation, and techies tend to believe that the "product" part of the job is "piece of cake" compared to the technical challenges of the projects.
Another complicating factor is that project management is a discipline of its own, and anyone without some training in this will be a dabbler and probably underperform. Unfortunately, in my experience, "product" people tend to have a stronger background in this field than technical people do.
The best solution in my experience is to have a "product person" who has final authority in the project, but to have a technical PM whose job it is to execute that persons specifications according to agreed deadlines and budgets (i.e. the technical PM is the one who schedules activities, creates fabulous GANTT charts, pushes for deliveries etc.). I have, however, seen non-tech people do well in the hands-on PM roll. In these cases those PMs have had the brains to understand enough of the tech part to be relevant in their role.
Anyone else think the business world looks like a game of Pac Man?
It's pure math, really. There is a significant, steady stream of new businesses being created, even if you only count the ones that make it past the infancy stage. Additional ones are being created buy spin-offs/spin-outs/demergers/whateveryoucallits.
In a country with a relatively stable population, this can only mean one of two things: Either the average size of firms must be decreasing, or a number of firms must be disappearing. The strongest of these two factors will of course be the latter. Given that the two ways in which companies can disappear are bankruptcies/liquidations and mergers, you could say that mergers are good. Even if a merger is followed by layoffs etc., a company remains to pay severance packages and face other liabilities. Furthermore, a merger is usually less wasteful than closing a company, as valuable assets such as brand names are more likely to be preserved.
In a dynamic world with quick changes in technologies and customer preferences, continuous restructuring is necessary and desirable. Mergers are important mechanisms of such restructuring, alongside entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, strategic alliances etc.
This is not evolution, it is individual learning. At least at the robot-individual level, there are no random mutations and there is no death - both vital aspects of evolution.
If all you have to do to get me to stop leaving burn bags of dog crap on your front porch is to ask me, does that make it ok for me to leave those shitbombs until you say otherwise? (With the understanding that I'm free to start up again in a months time unless you keep repeating your request?)
They aren't leaving them on your doorstep, it's their own. You just insist on going there...
There are two main reasons for implementing the common currency - political and economic. Although the economic might be important (think in hundred billion dollar terms of potential efficiencies), the political have been the most important motivation.
The political goals behind the Euro are, of course, the often-cited "ever closer union". Many people think that a "United States of Europe" model, much along the lines of the USA, would be a good thing. Such a development goes hand in hand with tearing down the barriers for commerce, travel, cultural exchange and relocation of people and businesses. The whole EU Common Market project has been doing this explicitly for the last 6 years, and implicitly since the eighties. There are many arguments for and against such a European Federations, the most vocal opponents cite nationalism or the loss of local governance/influence, whilst the advocates usually talk about economic benefits, European identity and the need for transnational coordination to tackle global environmental issues etc.
The economic goals are basically to remove wasteful practices and increase productivity through increased competition and specialization. To deal with those individually:
Wasteful practices: A lot of resources in Europe are used for tackling currency translations of different sorts, ranging from exchange bureaus to expensive accounting consultants and accounting software development. This might sound marginal, and it is indeed way beyond one percent of GDP, but when applied to economies of this size it still adds up to triple-digit billions (Euro or US, take your pick). There is also a lot of (costly) risk taking will be removed.
Increased competition: Especially in the smaller countries, local markets can be so small that they don't support enough suppliers (or buyers) to ensure good competition. This leads to monopolistic behavior, and hurts the economies in terms of lost production and mis-allocation of production resources. By removing barriers to cross-border tenders, competition (and thereby efficiency) is increased.
Specialization: Because the Germans are better at making cars than the Swiss, while the Swiss are better at making cheese, it makes sense if the Swiss make cheese for the Germans and the Germans make cars for the Swiss. This is called specialization, and occurs within economies as well as between them (in fact, specialization is the main reason why e.g. currency, the corporation and industrialization have been so important for the economic development in our history). Specialization between economies is realized through trade, which will be facilitated by the common currency.
The cons: The economic cons are well-known, but hard to quantify. Basically, the main problem is that with a common currency comes (by definition) a common monetary policy. Monetary policy needs to be adjusted to the business cycle. The cost of the common currency will be incurred when different policies are needed in different parts of the EU, e.g. if boom in Ireland requires a contractionary policy (high interest rates) while recession in Germany requires stimulation (low interest rates). This has been experienced by the US, when Chicago (car industry) was in recession while California (high-tech etc.) was booming, and the Fed had no way to respond to this situation.
The gravity of this problem is determined by how different the business cycle is within the common currency region, which again is determined by the mobility of resources (notably including labor resources). It is widely accepted that European workers are, at least at present, less likely to move to other countries than Americans are to move to other states. Therefore, this problem is likely to be bigger in Europe than in the US. Whether this will eat up all the economic benefits is not predictable with present analytic tools, and only time will show. Most economists seem to be in favor of the Euro, though.
pk
Then again, Tolkien didn't think what he wrote would ever appeal to anyone and needed tremendous push from his family and the editor in order to ever publish the thing. He wasn't really a great judge of his audience, was he?
My personal guess is that if he got to see the joy and excitement the film is inevitably going to spread to kids and adults alike, he would feel it is a good thing. Of course he would still grumble about characters and plot details lost - all writers do.
...that McDonald's are planning to sue people who give "unauthorized" directions to their restaunts.
>But at the end of the day you're still working to make someone else rich. What a weird way to look at it. You get a salary and a cut of the upside, but have a problem with the fact that someone else makes money with you. This must mean that you either believe: 1. That the "someone elses" in question doesn't contribute anything to the equation, or 2. That the "someone elses" in question shouldn't be rewarded for their contribution If 1., then I suggest creating your own employment by creating a business plan and putting up your own money as risk capital. If that isn't a contribution, then it should be painless to come up with it. That way you are free of your "slavery" (but, I would presume, working much harder and making much less, at least initially). If 2., then you are basically advocating the "slavery" of the other participants of the business you are working for. They are contributing, but you want to deny them a reward for their contribution. If the argument is that any kind of contractual working relationship is "slavery", no matter whether compensation is fair or not, then it is hard to see how we could abolish slavery. It would have to be either by making all companies and organizations cooperatives where people work voluntarily and without commitment, or a return to a society where the biggest coordinated unit is one person. Both of these are utopian visions that could only be realised at great loss to standards of living, technological development etc.
A vol number of 98% is meaningless: 20% vol means a stock will go up or down by less than 20% two out of three years. 98% implies a distribution so non-normal (i.e. companies going out of business left and right, or growing like rabbits) as to be mere math junk. This is correct only if you calculate volatility on the basis of a normal distribution function. However, it is customary (especially in academia) to express the vol on a log-normal distribution basis. That way you can have unlimited volatility without getting the assymetry problem described. That having been said, I agree with the critique of the article. It does not surprise me at all that employees overvalue stock options - in most startups the management probably does the same. The reason: The people working at startups HAVE TO be unrealistically optimistic about their company's future, otherwise they cannot succeed. Remember than 9 out of 10 startups don't survive the entrepreneurial phase...
Wireless data services will give us tons of new opportunities, albeit more slowly than we would like. Clearly the initial hype has led to overinvestment and unrealistic expectations about the wireless internet. Furthermore, putting "internet" in its nickname has created expectations of having an experience that resembles the current HTML, fixed-terminal, Netscape/IE rendered WWW. However, in a pretty short time, we have gone from having nothing in this area, to having a number of wireless data services that people think are worthwhile. Personally I've been grateful even for the 28.8K connection I got from my laptop via "high-speed" GSM data during frequent train trips. Consumers in Europe, Japan and the Philipines have taken off totally on mobile messaging, and they don't seem to care about the limited input interface. Tweaking maximum value out of limited technology, companies in Scandinavia are offering a wide range of services from dating/matchmaking to event info on the SMS protocol (services that are often based on the same content databases that are fed to their WWW sites). I find the article very static in its views of both the internet and the society. It presents only what is needed to bring the net in its present form to today's devices in today's society. For instance, there is limited credibility to the "social stigma" theory of the barriers to wearable computing devices (such as the "cyborg" goggles). As with any new technology there will be an initial phase where the main market frowns upon it, while only a limited group of innovators embrace it. When the usefulness and fashion value of the thing is established, the rest will follow. This initial inertia is actually a good thing for the technology, as it allows the product to mature a bit with the early adopters before it hits main market. pk