Economics and the existance of the economy is based on exchange, not greed. Economics is the study of choice and policy within a given theoretical framework, not the study of greed with the implicit assumption of taking from the have nots. Once/when we "truly understand the mind," the economy will simply be better, not obsolete.
This isn't inconsistent with the idea of "how much one man needs." Indeed, with perfect information, we might be able to do better in allocating income in a more "fair" way (I'll leave it to the reader to determine what "fair" is).
Remember around Christmas 2003 when the Leafs were on their huge winning streak? They were tops in the real life NHL as recently as then, and that wasn't that long ago! Besides.. RTFA.. the season is only 7 games in.
you're absolutely right. I didn't see the value in paying $10 for 40 songs that I might not even keep. As others have mentioned, the 30 second samples are not a great indicator of the song, be it a 10-minute electronic song or a 3-minute punk song. The selection was wide, but there were some pretty big omissions. If emusic had more support from some other labels, it would have kept me for a few more months. By the end, it came down to "well, my account refreshes tomorrow.. I better download 40 songs or else I lose." That's not the way I like to do business.
Ultimately, when it's "Pay X for Y songs," I won't keep my account for too too long. At some point, I will consume up to the limit of what I consider to be the good music on the service. I probably would have stayed if there was a parallel itunes-like plan that allowed me to not be in the $10/mnth plan. But I guess you've got to respect their business model anyway, just because it is different from itunes, etc.
I was an emusic subscriber for the earlier part of this year, and it was pretty darn good. My only complaint is that I ran out of stuff to download. That is why I cancelled my account. I'm a big fan of indie music, but I found that there wasn't quite enough to keep me going. And new releases don't show up very quickly.
But, the revenue sharing program does give 50% to labels/artists, so I found that if I did have extra credits in a month, I would download albums that I had once (illegally) downloaded. This made me feel better about myself.
I lasted for about 9 months on the old emusic, and it was $100 well spent.
my guess is that if you were able to plot some index that showed technological progress over the years, it would have a similar exponential trend too..
No seriously... what capital projects could they be planning that they would need an equity offer for? If the company is generating ~$2M/employee right now, I am willing to assume that they are making a fine profit and should be able to present a strong enough balance sheet to either get loans or simply pay for a reasonably-sized project without any debt or equtiy.
At least with google there's a scale issue as they add more features/services and attempt to attract a larger userbase. Is Craigslist moving toward doing the same?
ok so it's off-topic, but here's some plain english:
> In a perfect world, the exchange rate will > adjust perfectly to inflation. However, in our > world, thanks to imperfect information, > inflation and exchange rates will vary in the > short run. Arbitrage does exist, as humans do > not have perfect knowlege of the future.
If we have perfect knowledge about the future (e.g. future currency prices and corresponding times that those prices will prevail), exchange rates will adjust perfectly to inflation due to market pressures. Otherwise, it is possible to buy or sell currency today and sell or buy it back in the future to make money. This is called "arbitrage" -- making money by exploiting adjustments in the market over time. It is extremely risky, but ultimately profits could exist in the immediate term.
(Reading: see articles on interest rate parity)
> We can make ex ante predictions, but we will > still end up with ex post deviations from such > predictions.
"Ex ante" (roughly) means "before the fact".. I can predict that the price of a Canadian dollar will be $0.75 US dollars tomorrow. However, if the price of a Canadian dollar is $0.76 US dollars tomorrow, there is a $0.01 "ex post" (after the fact) deviation from my prediction. The nature of time here is important: if I bought yesterday and sold today, general price inflation between yesterday and today must be about one and one third percent to wipe out the gain I could make. And such price inflation (1% per day) is quite extreme for relatively low-inflation modern economies.
basically...... the original parent to my response was saying that currency markets adjust perfectly no matter what the time period is. Interest rate parity, the condition that should make this happen, is a long run condition, so odds are good that they do not. Inflation rates and exchange rates are correlated, but not perfectly.
I am an economist... a young one, but one nonetheless!
In a perfect world, the exchange rate will adjust perfectly to inflation. However, in our world, thanks to imperfect information, inflation and exchange rates will vary in the short run. Arbitrage does exist, as humans do not have perfect knowlege of the future. We can make ex ante predictions, but we will still end up with ex post deviations from such predictions.
SO.. if you're adventurous, try a job in currency exchange markets to make (or lose) a buck or two!
If it goes through the mobile data service of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (and I'm definitely guessing it does), then it's 3DES and it's FIPS-140 certified. It should be secure enough.
Not to sound like a marketing drone, but more on the BlackBerry security model can be found at http://www.blackberry.net/solutions/government/sec urity.shtml
the author acknowledges this (and even uses similar words: "I'm willing to trade a little security for privacy.") in the article. the poster made the bad implication, not the original author.
good eye though!!
is there a legit application for this?
on
Safe and Insecure?
·
· Score: 1
the intent behind this seems culpable. it's similar to leaving a gun in a public place and saying "if I use this, the cops won't be able to trace it back to me in a court of law!!!!"
it seems like the only real application is to infringe on others' ip without drawing a clear line back to yourself. and that seems a bit silly to me.. it's easier to just not steal things in the first place.
further, if you're doing this with intent (e.g. you know what you're doing when you remove the security features), isn't that like giving a loaded gun to a random guy and saying "I'm not responsible!"
The only difference is that on the internet (thankfully) nobody gets seriously hurt.
That's a half-truth. Long term debt (loans, bonds, preferred shares) bares a fixed cost every year, where common shares do not. There are many ratios that attempt to describe the mix of debt and equity, as well as their fit of the mix to the company.
For example, with more debt you incur more yearly interest and your times interest earned ratio (net profits / interest costs) decreases, which can bring about questions of solvency.
Tech companies especially need to have very conservative ratios to show their financial viability. A lot of cash and not a lot of debt seems to be the rule of thumb when you look at the NASDAQ.
and further, it's meaningless to apply a national statistic to a specific industry. Simply because a country has a low overall labour productivity does not imply that its labour productivity is lower in all industries.. if you're interested in this phenomena and the "basic economics" surrounding it, the proof is in Ricardo's (very simplistic) works.
The injunction banning RIM from selling was stayed pending appeal/re-examination of NTP's patents. You can read more about it at RIM's corporate website. For the meantime and the years it will take to get this through appeal, BlackBerry can continue to be sold in the USA.
thanks for the tip, I'll definitely look into it. We're under a 12-month contract right now to get the lower price on sympatico, but it'll be up in Sept. Perhaps we will switch.
$100, that's amazing:) I must download more like you guys!
We seldom go over our $34.95 + tax (the 12-month contract deal) per month costs.. I guess we aren't really that hardcore anyway:)
Sympatico's rate is something like $3.95 per GB over.. that's still not that bad when you do go over.
Our only other choice around here is Rogers, and I've never been particularily thrilled with their service, so we stick with Bell. We get probably 2-3 hours of cable TV downtime per week (when we're awake.. I don't know what goes one when we're asleep), and I'd snap if our internet was like that.
so you're in Kingston, eh? I'm thinkin' about goin' to Queen's for grad studies in economics (I'm at WLU here in Waterloo.. UW is for suckas). I hear the ghettos are fun to live in! (no sarcasm intended... people have actually told me that.)
here in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Bell's Sympatico DSL service has a download cap of 10gb/month. And my roommates I (4 of us) are always under, even though we download our fair share.
In practical terms, what does it mean for us? We just don't download many movies.. anything else is fair game. It hasn't severly restricted our access, nor will it for the vast majority of users.
I couldn't imagine what we'd do to download 30gb in a month. It really isn't that restrictive at all.
no, I'm actually not kidding. One of my roommates is British, so he makes me try to drink all the "good beers" in the world. But I'll always go back to the 'shitty' domestic stuff. It's just better. It's easy to drink, and it doesn't make you feel more bloated than drinking a litre of chocolate milk..
Unless we're talkin' homebrew, which some people can do amazingly well. Want an eye-opening experience? Join your local homebrewers club!
We're Canada.. routinely, public figures who are disgraced step down here (except the Prime Minister, the cute little Energizer Bunny he is). There's honour attached to most positions, not just spin and no-holds-barred political mongering.
Although, I fear that like locks on a door, jamming frequencies will only stop the honest people from communicating.
for the amount of people routinely bitching and chewing on slashdot about their "digital rights" being "violated," I'm really shocked to see this at Score: 5.
Honestly, what's the difference between a cracker monitoring your actions and your admin doing the same?
Slashdot Mirror
Economics and the existance of the economy is based on exchange, not greed. Economics is the study of choice and policy within a given theoretical framework, not the study of greed with the implicit assumption of taking from the have nots. Once/when we "truly understand the mind," the economy will simply be better, not obsolete.
This isn't inconsistent with the idea of "how much one man needs." Indeed, with perfect information, we might be able to do better in allocating income in a more "fair" way (I'll leave it to the reader to determine what "fair" is).
Remember around Christmas 2003 when the Leafs were on their huge winning streak? They were tops in the real life NHL as recently as then, and that wasn't that long ago! Besides.. RTFA.. the season is only 7 games in.
GO LEAFS GO!
it's ok.. he's getting punished via the slashdot effect right about now
first off, sweet sig :)
you're absolutely right. I didn't see the value in paying $10 for 40 songs that I might not even keep. As others have mentioned, the 30 second samples are not a great indicator of the song, be it a 10-minute electronic song or a 3-minute punk song. The selection was wide, but there were some pretty big omissions. If emusic had more support from some other labels, it would have kept me for a few more months. By the end, it came down to "well, my account refreshes tomorrow.. I better download 40 songs or else I lose." That's not the way I like to do business.
Ultimately, when it's "Pay X for Y songs," I won't keep my account for too too long. At some point, I will consume up to the limit of what I consider to be the good music on the service. I probably would have stayed if there was a parallel itunes-like plan that allowed me to not be in the $10/mnth plan. But I guess you've got to respect their business model anyway, just because it is different from itunes, etc.
I was an emusic subscriber for the earlier part of this year, and it was pretty darn good. My only complaint is that I ran out of stuff to download. That is why I cancelled my account. I'm a big fan of indie music, but I found that there wasn't quite enough to keep me going. And new releases don't show up very quickly.
But, the revenue sharing program does give 50% to labels/artists, so I found that if I did have extra credits in a month, I would download albums that I had once (illegally) downloaded. This made me feel better about myself.
I lasted for about 9 months on the old emusic, and it was $100 well spent.
my guess is that if you were able to plot some index that showed technological progress over the years, it would have a similar exponential trend too..
No seriously... what capital projects could they be planning that they would need an equity offer for? If the company is generating ~$2M/employee right now, I am willing to assume that they are making a fine profit and should be able to present a strong enough balance sheet to either get loans or simply pay for a reasonably-sized project without any debt or equtiy.
At least with google there's a scale issue as they add more features/services and attempt to attract a larger userbase. Is Craigslist moving toward doing the same?
ok so it's off-topic, but here's some plain english:
> In a perfect world, the exchange rate will
> adjust perfectly to inflation. However, in our
> world, thanks to imperfect information,
> inflation and exchange rates will vary in the
> short run. Arbitrage does exist, as humans do
> not have perfect knowlege of the future.
If we have perfect knowledge about the future (e.g. future currency prices and corresponding times that those prices will prevail), exchange rates will adjust perfectly to inflation due to market pressures. Otherwise, it is possible to buy or sell currency today and sell or buy it back in the future to make money. This is called "arbitrage" -- making money by exploiting adjustments in the market over time. It is extremely risky, but ultimately profits could exist in the immediate term.
(Reading: see articles on interest rate parity)
> We can make ex ante predictions, but we will
> still end up with ex post deviations from such
> predictions.
"Ex ante" (roughly) means "before the fact".. I can predict that the price of a Canadian dollar will be $0.75 US dollars tomorrow. However, if the price of a Canadian dollar is $0.76 US dollars tomorrow, there is a $0.01 "ex post" (after the fact) deviation from my prediction. The nature of time here is important: if I bought yesterday and sold today, general price inflation between yesterday and today must be about one and one third percent to wipe out the gain I could make. And such price inflation (1% per day) is quite extreme for relatively low-inflation modern economies.
basically...... the original parent to my response was saying that currency markets adjust perfectly no matter what the time period is. Interest rate parity, the condition that should make this happen, is a long run condition, so odds are good that they do not. Inflation rates and exchange rates are correlated, but not perfectly.
I am an economist... a young one, but one nonetheless!
In a perfect world, the exchange rate will adjust perfectly to inflation. However, in our world, thanks to imperfect information, inflation and exchange rates will vary in the short run. Arbitrage does exist, as humans do not have perfect knowlege of the future. We can make ex ante predictions, but we will still end up with ex post deviations from such predictions.
SO.. if you're adventurous, try a job in currency exchange markets to make (or lose) a buck or two!
"choose an attractive young woman"
attractive young women hang out in CS classes?!
If it goes through the mobile data service of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (and I'm definitely guessing it does), then it's 3DES and it's FIPS-140 certified. It should be secure enough.
c urity.shtml
Not to sound like a marketing drone, but more on the BlackBerry security model can be found at http://www.blackberry.net/solutions/government/se
the author acknowledges this (and even uses similar words: "I'm willing to trade a little security for privacy.") in the article. the poster made the bad implication, not the original author.
good eye though!!
the intent behind this seems culpable. it's similar to leaving a gun in a public place and saying "if I use this, the cops won't be able to trace it back to me in a court of law!!!!"
it seems like the only real application is to infringe on others' ip without drawing a clear line back to yourself. and that seems a bit silly to me.. it's easier to just not steal things in the first place.
further, if you're doing this with intent (e.g. you know what you're doing when you remove the security features), isn't that like giving a loaded gun to a random guy and saying "I'm not responsible!"
The only difference is that on the internet (thankfully) nobody gets seriously hurt.
That's a half-truth. Long term debt (loans, bonds, preferred shares) bares a fixed cost every year, where common shares do not. There are many ratios that attempt to describe the mix of debt and equity, as well as their fit of the mix to the company.
For example, with more debt you incur more yearly interest and your times interest earned ratio (net profits / interest costs) decreases, which can bring about questions of solvency.
Tech companies especially need to have very conservative ratios to show their financial viability. A lot of cash and not a lot of debt seems to be the rule of thumb when you look at the NASDAQ.
and further, it's meaningless to apply a national statistic to a specific industry. Simply because a country has a low overall labour productivity does not imply that its labour productivity is lower in all industries.. if you're interested in this phenomena and the "basic economics" surrounding it, the proof is in Ricardo's (very simplistic) works.
if you're going to get all legal-paranoid, at least spell it (DMCA) right...
The injunction banning RIM from selling was stayed pending appeal/re-examination of NTP's patents. You can read more about it at RIM's corporate website. For the meantime and the years it will take to get this through appeal, BlackBerry can continue to be sold in the USA.
thanks for the tip, I'll definitely look into it. We're under a 12-month contract right now to get the lower price on sympatico, but it'll be up in Sept. Perhaps we will switch.
$100, that's amazing :) I must download more like you guys!
:)
We seldom go over our $34.95 + tax (the 12-month contract deal) per month costs.. I guess we aren't really that hardcore anyway
Sympatico's rate is something like $3.95 per GB over.. that's still not that bad when you do go over.
Our only other choice around here is Rogers, and I've never been particularily thrilled with their service, so we stick with Bell. We get probably 2-3 hours of cable TV downtime per week (when we're awake.. I don't know what goes one when we're asleep), and I'd snap if our internet was like that.
so you're in Kingston, eh? I'm thinkin' about goin' to Queen's for grad studies in economics (I'm at WLU here in Waterloo.. UW is for suckas). I hear the ghettos are fun to live in! (no sarcasm intended... people have actually told me that.)
here in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Bell's Sympatico DSL service has a download cap of 10gb/month. And my roommates I (4 of us) are always under, even though we download our fair share.
In practical terms, what does it mean for us? We just don't download many movies.. anything else is fair game. It hasn't severly restricted our access, nor will it for the vast majority of users.
I couldn't imagine what we'd do to download 30gb in a month. It really isn't that restrictive at all.
no, I'm actually not kidding. One of my roommates is British, so he makes me try to drink all the "good beers" in the world. But I'll always go back to the 'shitty' domestic stuff. It's just better. It's easy to drink, and it doesn't make you feel more bloated than drinking a litre of chocolate milk..
Unless we're talkin' homebrew, which some people can do amazingly well. Want an eye-opening experience? Join your local homebrewers club!
how dare you call molson's "the bad guys?" I owe my healthy figure to them and their tasty, tasty beers.
Let's hear it for the molson muscle!
We're Canada.. routinely, public figures who are disgraced step down here (except the Prime Minister, the cute little Energizer Bunny he is). There's honour attached to most positions, not just spin and no-holds-barred political mongering.
Although, I fear that like locks on a door, jamming frequencies will only stop the honest people from communicating.
generally, the pediatrician isn't using the results to publically humiliate you.
for the amount of people routinely bitching and chewing on slashdot about their "digital rights" being "violated," I'm really shocked to see this at Score: 5.
Honestly, what's the difference between a cracker monitoring your actions and your admin doing the same?