My thoughts exactly. I spent a couple of decades reading
libertarian literature and this is news to me:
"Libertarians do not believe markets should be totally
unregulated."
Of course, it could be this is simply a sign that the people
formerly-known-as-libertarians are aware (on some level) of how
badly their ideas have been playing out, and rather than admit
they got some stuff wrong are going to start claiming they were
really saying something else entirely.
From a certain point of view, this would be good news.
Google needs to find a way to move large numbers of people around, something to get the most of of the existing infrastructure.
Dirigibles! They need to invest in dirigible transit systems, and
construct housing in floating geodesic spheres, then they could
toe them around to venues with optimal tax policies.
And they could use Moffett Field as it was intended.
Google builds offices where their employees want to live
It's hard to find people who want to live in Mountain View. [1]
Actually, it is a bit of a puzzle as to why Google can't figure
out how to shake down Mountain View and get the zoning variations
they want out of them. If they were a football team, they'd be
making noises about moving the stadium to Fremont, but *nooo*
they've got to come on with that "don't be evil" crap, so
Mountain View just walks over them.
[1] Yeah, I know-- I like the Castro St area myself. If Silicon
Valley could build some more of those I'd stop bitching about the
place.
To summarize where the article goes: the Bay Area needs regional
planning and unified tax policies.
A respectable opinion at least, and better than I expected.
Like most such things, the author downplays esthetics and
fashion-- why is New Urbanism winning? Demographics! Now me,
I would say New Urbanism is winning because it's (1) it's right
(2) it did a nerdy-to-sexy transistion.
This is the first I've seen of the Vida project, and that
architech needs to be shot: "Everyone loves the wavy look of
bay windows, I'll make the windows wavy in the *vertical*
direction! I'm creative!"
No wonder no one wants to see any new construction.
One of the big reasons no one is excited about seeing big
housing construction projects is that no one believes they're
going to get it right: nearly everything in the US built since
WWII is horrible.
I don't subscribe to any conspiracy theory that Lessig baited a copyright holder.
It's hardly a "conspiracy theory", have you ever seen Lessig in action? The last time I saw him speak, he used a gratuitous clip from "Casablanca" to make a point.
Are you going to tell me that he wasn't waving a red cape in front of the MPAA's nose?
We stopped using ReiserFS because its performance really wasn't very good compared to its modern competition.
Really? No numbers I've ever seen have ever tested file systems in the one case the ReiserFS targeted but no one else seems to have: large numbers of small files.
But then, I haven't stopped using ReiserFS either.
(And yes, it is being maintained, last I looked the Debian team was still doing bug fixes to Reiser 3.)
This is complete crap. You can't get the smear to work so you go
for some sort of Very Serious line like "perhaps both sides are
at fault here". Sometimes "nuance is dead" because there's
nothing to be nuanced about: the US intelligence apparatus is a
bunch of out-of-control criminals (they may be True Believers who
think they're saving the world, but that just makes them
messaianic and deluded, it doesn't change the fact that they're
criminals). They operate with the collusion of the President of
the US, but that doesn't provide any legal sanction, they're
still a cancer on the side of democracy. I hope we can somehow
find a way to crawl back from the edge of this abyss, but that
remains an open question, and it's looking like a pretty slow
crawl.
Yes, one of the arguments against Bitcoin is that it's a
deflationary currency, and a certain lossage rate might help
offset that effect slightly. But I wouldn't count on it.
So it that bicycle routing "safe", or don't you care about little details like that?
Are you under the impression that google only returns "safe" bike routes? I've had it give me directions from Oakland to Alameda going through the Posey tube... you would need to try that sometime to understand how funny that is. Yeah, you *can* get a bicycle through there... *if* you've got the Right Stuff.
There was a company that was doing heat maps of crime, but they have not done a single update in two years.
Let me see if I can put this delicately. If you care about this you're an idiot. (Oh well.).
If you're driving around what you really want is a "heat map" of traffic accidents. If you're walking around what you really want is a "heat map" of pedestrian deaths. And so on...
Stressing out about stray bullets, even in a "bad neighborhood" is only one step up from worrying about lightning strikes.
(Note: I live in West Oakland. Everyone is excited that they're were only 92 homicides in Oakland last year.)
If you RTFA, you'll see the author sneers at Krugman because he
said he doesn't like the "sound" of bitcoin, but if you actually
read the Krugman post, you'll note that he actually has an argument
To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value. And it remains completely unclear why BitCoin should be a stable store of value.
Daniel Jeffries (the author of TFA), essentially argues that
there are multiple competing digital currency systems and we should
let the market choose which one it wants to use.
It's difficult to know where to start with someone this naive,
who hasn't been paying any attention to real world events in the
last several decades.
He's stuck on the idea that people are rational actors, that they
don't get carried away by fads ("irrational exuberence"), they
don't create bubbles, con themselves that this time it's
different, then get really dissapointed when the bubble pops.
He's looking for a technical fix for the need for something like
the Fed without quite knowing what it is that the Fed is doing...
Try this point: bitcoin is the standard
bearer for every digital currency, if bitcoin crashes and burns, no one is
going to be willing to trust any of the others. Talk about it's
technical advantages until you're blue in the face, no one will
listen to you...
Everyone seems to be missing this one, the post at Krugman's blog
where he quotes John R Levine:
An Ubernerd Weighs In:
He's essentially impressed with the technical achievements of
bitcoin, and argues that his fellow techies are drunk on the
achievement, and missing the fact that it's not really good for
much.
the commonly agreed value of anything stabilizes as more people have or use that thing
And if the price does not stabilize, maybe people won't agree to use it, eh?
The thing to worry about is conditions where people think the price is stable, attempt to use it as a "store of value", then discover that they were wrong.
It's a good thing that never happens to anything that's in wide use, eh?
Even without knowing much about this, I can tell you: everyone is
trying to code to new, non-standard UIs.
And I can predict what the solution will be: before this problem
is solved the web browsers in the devices will get better, and
we'll be back to coding for the web.
The only question is whether the mobile app startup bubble will
go poof before or after that.
(By the way... wouldn't it be nice if all of this effort were
directed to solving real problems? I'm pretty sure we could find
some real problems if we looked...).
Yeah, 'cause the threat of WW3 after two devastating world wars and the high possibility extinction of humanity in a nuclear holocaust was just so trivial. Get over yourselves, kids and other assorted man-children; you are not some special and unique snowflakes.
Ah, I see, so your conclusion is 'twas ever thus, and nothing
ever changes under the Sun (this, or under any other), and people
have come to accept this and hence have no interest in how things
might change.
Even the WWWIII scenario is pretty easy to think about-- either
that happens or all will be well. Singularities on the
other hand...
With over 2.5 Million Americans having been deployed to
Afghanistan and/or Iraq (over 400,000 deployed three or more
times and 37,000 of those deploying 5 times or more), are you
still of the belief that Science Fiction stories written by
veterans depicting combat are nothing more than "war porn?"
That wars happen has never been in question, the question was
whether a David Drake make war more likely-- did this kind of
stuff encourage fantasies like "I am a tough-minded realist,
willing to face squarely the horrible necessity of
engaging in this profoundly nasty endeavor (that I secretly think
is Really Cool)."
Can you draw a line between Pournelle & Drake and maybe guys like
Taleb and end up at Donald Rumsfeld?
In any case, I think you're taking the younger Sterlings posturing too
seriously. He was copping a pose of young upstart, leader of The
Movement, and now he's copping a pose of responsible Design
School Visionary, and if you think any of these poses are The
Real Sterling, maybe you need to re-read some of his books, like
"Schismatrix" and "Zeitgeist".
Slashdot Mirror
My thoughts exactly. I spent a couple of decades reading libertarian literature and this is news to me: "Libertarians do not believe markets should be totally unregulated."
Of course, it could be this is simply a sign that the people formerly-known-as-libertarians are aware (on some level) of how badly their ideas have been playing out, and rather than admit they got some stuff wrong are going to start claiming they were really saying something else entirely.
From a certain point of view, this would be good news.
Dirigibles! They need to invest in dirigible transit systems, and construct housing in floating geodesic spheres, then they could toe them around to venues with optimal tax policies.
And they could use Moffett Field as it was intended.
It's hard to find people who want to live in Mountain View. [1]
Actually, it is a bit of a puzzle as to why Google can't figure out how to shake down Mountain View and get the zoning variations they want out of them. If they were a football team, they'd be making noises about moving the stadium to Fremont, but *nooo* they've got to come on with that "don't be evil" crap, so Mountain View just walks over them.
[1] Yeah, I know-- I like the Castro St area myself. If Silicon Valley could build some more of those I'd stop bitching about the place.
If you read the fucking article, you'd see that the author concludes the Bay Area needs some centralized regional planning and unified tax codes.
But hey, simple problems for simple minds. Back to you're regular scheduled "da guvvamint is da problem" rants.
A respectable opinion at least, and better than I expected.
Like most such things, the author downplays esthetics and fashion-- why is New Urbanism winning? Demographics! Now me, I would say New Urbanism is winning because it's (1) it's right (2) it did a nerdy-to-sexy transistion.
This is the first I've seen of the Vida project, and that architech needs to be shot: "Everyone loves the wavy look of bay windows, I'll make the windows wavy in the *vertical* direction! I'm creative!"
No wonder no one wants to see any new construction.
One of the big reasons no one is excited about seeing big housing construction projects is that no one believes they're going to get it right: nearly everything in the US built since WWII is horrible.
Well then, that settles it. Because the market is never wrong, buyers are never irrational and ignorant, and bubbles never happen (until they do).
If you're looking for some insight on what's going on in the Ukraine from people who aren't insane warmongers, you might start here: Chris Bertram on who to read, what to believe.
But what does Rush Limbaugh say about it?
But commas aren't used in urls.
PipeColon would work better.
It's hardly a "conspiracy theory", have you ever seen Lessig in action? The last time I saw him speak, he used a gratuitous clip from "Casablanca" to make a point.
Are you going to tell me that he wasn't waving a red cape in front of the MPAA's nose?
Really? No numbers I've ever seen have ever tested file systems in the one case the ReiserFS targeted but no one else seems to have: large numbers of small files.
But then, I haven't stopped using ReiserFS either. (And yes, it is being maintained, last I looked the Debian team was still doing bug fixes to Reiser 3.)
This is complete crap. You can't get the smear to work so you go for some sort of Very Serious line like "perhaps both sides are at fault here". Sometimes "nuance is dead" because there's nothing to be nuanced about: the US intelligence apparatus is a bunch of out-of-control criminals (they may be True Believers who think they're saving the world, but that just makes them messaianic and deluded, it doesn't change the fact that they're criminals). They operate with the collusion of the President of the US, but that doesn't provide any legal sanction, they're still a cancer on the side of democracy. I hope we can somehow find a way to crawl back from the edge of this abyss, but that remains an open question, and it's looking like a pretty slow crawl.
Duh. You got me. I'll skip the "it was early" excuse.
Yes, one of the arguments against Bitcoin is that it's a deflationary currency, and a certain lossage rate might help offset that effect slightly. But I wouldn't count on it.
But what does Leonard di Caprio say about it? And how about Justin Beiber?
Are you under the impression that google only returns "safe" bike routes? I've had it give me directions from Oakland to Alameda going through the Posey tube... you would need to try that sometime to understand how funny that is. Yeah, you *can* get a bicycle through there... *if* you've got the Right Stuff.
Let me see if I can put this delicately. If you care about this you're an idiot. (Oh well.).
If you're driving around what you really want is a "heat map" of traffic accidents. If you're walking around what you really want is a "heat map" of pedestrian deaths. And so on...
Stressing out about stray bullets, even in a "bad neighborhood" is only one step up from worrying about lightning strikes.
(Note: I live in West Oakland. Everyone is excited that they're were only 92 homicides in Oakland last year.)
If you RTFA, you'll see the author sneers at Krugman because he said he doesn't like the "sound" of bitcoin, but if you actually read the Krugman post, you'll note that he actually has an argument
Daniel Jeffries (the author of TFA), essentially argues that there are multiple competing digital currency systems and we should let the market choose which one it wants to use.
It's difficult to know where to start with someone this naive, who hasn't been paying any attention to real world events in the last several decades. He's stuck on the idea that people are rational actors, that they don't get carried away by fads ("irrational exuberence"), they don't create bubbles, con themselves that this time it's different, then get really dissapointed when the bubble pops. He's looking for a technical fix for the need for something like the Fed without quite knowing what it is that the Fed is doing...
Try this point: bitcoin is the standard bearer for every digital currency, if bitcoin crashes and burns, no one is going to be willing to trust any of the others. Talk about it's technical advantages until you're blue in the face, no one will listen to you...
From TFA:
Can you smell the hand waving?
Good luck finding a school of econ that argues "deflation" is good.
(Gold buggery is popular among some cranks outside of Econ, not inside it.)
Everyone seems to be missing this one, the post at Krugman's blog where he quotes John R Levine: An Ubernerd Weighs In: He's essentially impressed with the technical achievements of bitcoin, and argues that his fellow techies are drunk on the achievement, and missing the fact that it's not really good for much.
And if the price does not stabilize, maybe people won't agree to use it, eh?
The thing to worry about is conditions where people think the price is stable, attempt to use it as a "store of value", then discover that they were wrong.
It's a good thing that never happens to anything that's in wide use, eh?
Is Unix Dead?
Will Martians Invade?
Is Pope Catholic?
Will Made-Ya-Look News Ever Cease
Even without knowing much about this, I can tell you: everyone is trying to code to new, non-standard UIs.
And I can predict what the solution will be: before this problem is solved the web browsers in the devices will get better, and we'll be back to coding for the web.
The only question is whether the mobile app startup bubble will go poof before or after that.
(By the way... wouldn't it be nice if all of this effort were directed to solving real problems? I'm pretty sure we could find some real problems if we looked...).
Ah, I see, so your conclusion is 'twas ever thus, and nothing ever changes under the Sun (this, or under any other), and people have come to accept this and hence have no interest in how things might change.
Even the WWWIII scenario is pretty easy to think about-- either that happens or all will be well. Singularities on the other hand...
That wars happen has never been in question, the question was whether a David Drake make war more likely-- did this kind of stuff encourage fantasies like "I am a tough-minded realist, willing to face squarely the horrible necessity of engaging in this profoundly nasty endeavor (that I secretly think is Really Cool)."
Can you draw a line between Pournelle & Drake and maybe guys like Taleb and end up at Donald Rumsfeld?
In any case, I think you're taking the younger Sterlings posturing too seriously. He was copping a pose of young upstart, leader of The Movement, and now he's copping a pose of responsible Design School Visionary, and if you think any of these poses are The Real Sterling, maybe you need to re-read some of his books, like "Schismatrix" and "Zeitgeist".