One recurring theme in the early days of packet switching is the skepticism voiced about the concept by the traditional telecommunications providers, in particular AT&T. Baran recollected (Brand 2001) that when he tried to interest AT&T in the idea, he was told: "It's not going to work. And furthermore, we're not going into competition with ourselves." Larry Roberts recollected (Roberts 1986): “In some of the initial technical speeches I gave, communications professionals reacted with considerable anger and hostility, usually saying I did not know what I was talking about since I did not know all their jargon vocabulary.” From one perspective, this response is a classic illustration of what Christensen called the “innovator’s dilemma” (Christensen 1997), in which an incumbent industry rejects a new idea which then matures and overtakes it. In fact, this early rejection may have been very liberating for the designers of packets switching, and may have materially contributed to the success of the concept. While this is pure speculation, it is possible that if AT&T research had fully participated in the evolution of packet switching, they might have imposed a bias on the idea in order to fit in with their conception of voice services that could have limited its general utility. When AT&T research did get involved with the packet switching concept, they put forward an alternative to the Internet design called Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM, based on switching small, fixed size data cells rather than larger, variable size packets as the Internet does. This design was considered more suitable for voice, and was not, as initially standardized, the commercial success that the Internet was.
Government's proper role is to fund the long-term research that private companies are too focused on next quarter's stockholders' report to invest in. Then when individuals have created the ground-breaking disruptive research (like the internet), business can take over and bring it to the masses.
England's debt-to-gdp ratio has reached well over 200%, once to fund the industrial revolution, and again to fight WWII. And yet the grandchildren of the people in those times enjoy a substantially higher standard of living, longer life expectancy, etc.
So when have the predictions about grandchildren suffering because of national debt ever come true?
Actually, business is not very good at disruptive innovation like computers, the internet, nuclear power, space exploration, etc. That is govt's proper role, to fund long-term research and development. Biz is better at incremental innovation: making computers smaller, bringing the internet to the masses, etc.
Steven Johnson in a Salon interview about his book "Where Good Ideas Come From" says:
in the last chapter I tried to zoom out far enough and look at 200 to 300 stories from the last 400 to 500 years to really see from the long view what the patterns of innovation were. And it turns out that groups of people collaborating on ideas to advance science or technology without the goal of proprietary ownership are actually a bigger driver of innovation than the private sector. In many cases these other [nonprofit-minded] groups create ideas which allow commercial development on top of them. The Internet is the classic example.
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. Knowledge, innovation, technology is. In times like these when biz is sitting on trillions of cash, govt needs to step up to prevent suffering and encourage the continuing advance of innovation. Our creativity is what keeps our currency strong, by producing things others want.
When have predictions about the deficit causing doom and gloom ever come true in the US? Lincoln printed over $400 million greenbacks, and it worked. Under FDR the govt took over some 40% of GDP, and it worked. Reagan tripled the debt, and it worked.
Why should money creation automatically be tied to debt? Because bankers profit that way? Why can't our elected representatives create debt-free money to fund a robust safety net (or basic income) and encourage innovation through challenges (nothing prevents private companies like Google and Netflix from holding challenges too of course)?
If you look at the figures for US foreign-owned debt, you will see that we could pay off China with the recently-passed tax cut for the richest 2%. Note that the second largest holder of US foreign debt is Japan, with its 200% debt-to-gdp ratio. Also note that foreign debt totals some $4.2 trillion; most of the rest is government owing money to itself - which can be forgiven or written down. So the debt crisis is not nearly as scary as politicians focused on elections want you to believe!
Fears about the debt are a pure political ploy, an appeal to emotion and bad analogies with personal finances, designed to scare the voters with predictions about their grandchildren that have been made ever since this country was founded and Alexander Hamilton assumed the states' war debts. But govt can do things that individuals can't, like print money, and declare war. And this visualization of the last 200 years shows that none of the predictions about grandchildren being worse off have come true.
Recognize the fears about the debt for what it is: simply a means to get attention. Everyone knows the debt doesn't matter, especially Republican presidents, who are strongly correlated with increases in the debt.
so unobtrusive that the other day i was clicking on them thinking they were part of the text of the page, but they led to ads that were not at all what I was looking for, only related by the most far-fetched stretch of imagination.
When you have ads you start worrying about not getting money if you post something that advertisers or google doesn't like, and that hampers objectivity.
I like how efnet bans all ip ranges for virgin mobile broadband because someone was spamming email (not even affecting efnet!) from one of them. Maybe this will change that:)
Disagree. When you get ads, you'll get the equivalent of the old "blinking text" - they'll make it as distracting as possible, so that for example if your mouse happens to be over a certain region an ad will expand in an extremely obtrusive manner. How many times has that precise behavior in the WoW ads that were running above the Slashdot logo caused me annoyance in the past few weeks? I for one prefer the begging on wikipedia. Begging is very cool, Jainism has built an entire religion around it.
The meme that govt steals your money through taxation is only valid if you vote for the person that mugs you. Taxation with representation, the horror!
That being said, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. I would make taxes voluntary and print the budget. As long as the printed money is used to fund a robust safety net and encourage individual innovation through challenges (biz can fund challenges too, like Google, Netflix, etc.), we will continue to produce things others want, and the currency will remain strong. Like Japan's currency is higher than they want, despite their 200% debt-to-gdp ratio.
In the guy's presentation he explicitly mentions that the Depression didn't affect the US's progress. Govt can and should spend in times when biz is sitting on their wealth. The dire predictions of the doom and gloom pop economists in the 1930s about their grandchildren's future did not come true...
But can't you see that you're making life worse for me, because I don't fit into the world that is so "real" to you?
Rather than an ivory tower, I live quite close to the streets, because I can't function in your world. It doesn't get much more real than sleeping outside!
'Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy isn't important, and if you want to keep something private, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"'
The reason you're afraid of having your opinions exposed is because you can't back them up, they are subjective, so you're more comfortable saying them in a situation where you think they won't come out and be challenged. In other words, you're a coward.
I saw an interview with Steve Johnson in which he said at the end of his book _Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation_ he attempted a survey of private vs. public sector innovation and concluded they're about even, or possibly government-funded ideas have a slight edge.
The assumption behind your logic is that everyone wants candy bars and will eat them till they pop if they can. Do you make that assumption based on yourself? If so, is that a good way to be? How could you change your addictive behavior so that you would stop eating candy bars, even if you had enough money to keep buying them?
Also, shouldn't the classic supply and demand curve appy here, more demand stimulates more supply which brings down the price - especially since economies of scale would lower the cost per unit of candy bar production?
Is that what you're really afraid of, deflation? That everyone would then have as much access to resources as you do now, so you would lose your sense of superiority? Do you need the poor to exist, to validate yourself?:)
In fact the value of currency is psychological. If one dollar buys one candy bar, why should that change if there are more dollars? Nothing has really changed in terms of the candy bar's production costs. The only reason the price would go up is if the shopkeeper decides I'm going to gouge the buyer because he suddenly has more money. But if the shopkeeper already has enough money to get what he wants, why should he raise prices?
Think about the root causes of inflation. Just because more money is available, why does that mean anyone HAS to raise prices? The only reason to raise prices is you want to create artificial scarcity. Inflation due to increased money supply is a choice, not a natural law.
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. Why should economics stand in the way of a utopia where we have more leisure time to solve unsolved problems? Govt can create money (like banks do), but since govt is mandated to help its citizens govt can give it to ppl debt-free so that we can work on creating robots to automate the jobs we don't want to do!
While the commonly accepted standard model of matter provides a very good description of the phenomena observed in experiments, the model is still incomplete. It can explain the behaviour of particles fairly well, but it cannot explain why some particles exist as they do. For example, it has been impossible to predict the mass of the top quark accurately from theoretical inference until it was determined experimentally. As mentioned before, the standard model of matter does not provide any mathematical model that allows us to calculate the observed mass.
Slashdot Mirror
The irony is if biz had had its way, you'd be posting on Prodigy or Compuserve.
From Computer networks and the Internet: A brief history of predicting their future:
Government's proper role is to fund the long-term research that private companies are too focused on next quarter's stockholders' report to invest in. Then when individuals have created the ground-breaking disruptive research (like the internet), business can take over and bring it to the masses.
England's debt-to-gdp ratio has reached well over 200%, once to fund the industrial revolution, and again to fight WWII. And yet the grandchildren of the people in those times enjoy a substantially higher standard of living, longer life expectancy, etc.
So when have the predictions about grandchildren suffering because of national debt ever come true?
Actually, business is not very good at disruptive innovation like computers, the internet, nuclear power, space exploration, etc. That is govt's proper role, to fund long-term research and development. Biz is better at incremental innovation: making computers smaller, bringing the internet to the masses, etc.
Steven Johnson in a Salon interview about his book "Where Good Ideas Come From" says:
most of that money is created these days. This just in: IMF head says US should continue to print money:
"He said the Federal Reserve's latest round of easing policies meant to stimulate the economy was necessary."
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. Knowledge, innovation, technology is. In times like these when biz is sitting on trillions of cash, govt needs to step up to prevent suffering and encourage the continuing advance of innovation. Our creativity is what keeps our currency strong, by producing things others want.
When have predictions about the deficit causing doom and gloom ever come true in the US? Lincoln printed over $400 million greenbacks, and it worked. Under FDR the govt took over some 40% of GDP, and it worked. Reagan tripled the debt, and it worked.
Why should money creation automatically be tied to debt? Because bankers profit that way? Why can't our elected representatives create debt-free money to fund a robust safety net (or basic income) and encourage innovation through challenges (nothing prevents private companies like Google and Netflix from holding challenges too of course)?
If you look at the figures for US foreign-owned debt, you will see that we could pay off China with the recently-passed tax cut for the richest 2%. Note that the second largest holder of US foreign debt is Japan, with its 200% debt-to-gdp ratio. Also note that foreign debt totals some $4.2 trillion; most of the rest is government owing money to itself - which can be forgiven or written down. So the debt crisis is not nearly as scary as politicians focused on elections want you to believe!
Fears about the debt are a pure political ploy, an appeal to emotion and bad analogies with personal finances, designed to scare the voters with predictions about their grandchildren that have been made ever since this country was founded and Alexander Hamilton assumed the states' war debts. But govt can do things that individuals can't, like print money, and declare war. And this visualization of the last 200 years shows that none of the predictions about grandchildren being worse off have come true.
Recognize the fears about the debt for what it is: simply a means to get attention. Everyone knows the debt doesn't matter, especially Republican presidents, who are strongly correlated with increases in the debt.
so unobtrusive that the other day i was clicking on them thinking they were part of the text of the page, but they led to ads that were not at all what I was looking for, only related by the most far-fetched stretch of imagination.
When you have ads you start worrying about not getting money if you post something that advertisers or google doesn't like, and that hampers objectivity.
I like how efnet bans all ip ranges for virgin mobile broadband because someone was spamming email (not even affecting efnet!) from one of them. Maybe this will change that :)
Disagree. When you get ads, you'll get the equivalent of the old "blinking text" - they'll make it as distracting as possible, so that for example if your mouse happens to be over a certain region an ad will expand in an extremely obtrusive manner. How many times has that precise behavior in the WoW ads that were running above the Slashdot logo caused me annoyance in the past few weeks? I for one prefer the begging on wikipedia. Begging is very cool, Jainism has built an entire religion around it.
The meme that govt steals your money through taxation is only valid if you vote for the person that mugs you. Taxation with representation, the horror!
That being said, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. I would make taxes voluntary and print the budget. As long as the printed money is used to fund a robust safety net and encourage individual innovation through challenges (biz can fund challenges too, like Google, Netflix, etc.), we will continue to produce things others want, and the currency will remain strong. Like Japan's currency is higher than they want, despite their 200% debt-to-gdp ratio.
are you threatening the president?
In the guy's presentation he explicitly mentions that the Depression didn't affect the US's progress. Govt can and should spend in times when biz is sitting on their wealth. The dire predictions of the doom and gloom pop economists in the 1930s about their grandchildren's future did not come true...
But can't you see that you're making life worse for me, because I don't fit into the world that is so "real" to you?
Rather than an ivory tower, I live quite close to the streets, because I can't function in your world. It doesn't get much more real than sleeping outside!
'Google CEO Eric Schmidt says privacy isn't important, and if you want to keep something private, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place"'
The reason you're afraid of having your opinions exposed is because you can't back them up, they are subjective, so you're more comfortable saying them in a situation where you think they won't come out and be challenged. In other words, you're a coward.
Probably more destabilizing is the motivation that the "some information should be kept secret" meme incites in otherwise peaceful folk.
I saw an interview with Steve Johnson in which he said at the end of his book _Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation_ he attempted a survey of private vs. public sector innovation and concluded they're about even, or possibly government-funded ideas have a slight edge.
The assumption behind your logic is that everyone wants candy bars and will eat them till they pop if they can. Do you make that assumption based on yourself? If so, is that a good way to be? How could you change your addictive behavior so that you would stop eating candy bars, even if you had enough money to keep buying them?
Also, shouldn't the classic supply and demand curve appy here, more demand stimulates more supply which brings down the price - especially since economies of scale would lower the cost per unit of candy bar production?
Is that what you're really afraid of, deflation? That everyone would then have as much access to resources as you do now, so you would lose your sense of superiority? Do you need the poor to exist, to validate yourself? :)
In fact the value of currency is psychological. If one dollar buys one candy bar, why should that change if there are more dollars? Nothing has really changed in terms of the candy bar's production costs. The only reason the price would go up is if the shopkeeper decides I'm going to gouge the buyer because he suddenly has more money. But if the shopkeeper already has enough money to get what he wants, why should he raise prices?
Think about the root causes of inflation. Just because more money is available, why does that mean anyone HAS to raise prices? The only reason to raise prices is you want to create artificial scarcity. Inflation due to increased money supply is a choice, not a natural law.
The economic problem is not the central problem of mankind. Why should economics stand in the way of a utopia where we have more leisure time to solve unsolved problems? Govt can create money (like banks do), but since govt is mandated to help its citizens govt can give it to ppl debt-free so that we can work on creating robots to automate the jobs we don't want to do!
From http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/questions.html :
Nothing in the laws of physics says the guy can't not act, turn away from the 'woman of his dreams', filter her out of his field of view, /ignore her!
"The US national debt: $124,000 per taxpayer. Spent enough yet?"
Reagan proved deficits don't matter.
"Name one time government did any good."
Civil rights legislation.