In the book, Anderson focuses on the definition of hits in absolute terms such as the top 10 or top 1,000 products, while Netessine and Tan argue that, to take growing product variety into account, one has to define popularity in relative terms, such as the top 1% or top 10% of products, to properly assess the presence or absence of the Long Tail.
So let me see if I get this:
Anderson says, "Assume a bell curve with a sufficiently large ordinal scale X axis. Select a sufficiently narrow segment in the center. The area under the curve not included in that segment will be greater than the area under the curve included in that segment."
Netissine and Tan respond, "However: Select a segment in the center whose width is a fixed percentage of the ordinal scale of the X axis. Select a percentage which is sufficiently large. Now the area under the curve in the included segment will be greater than the area not included."
For this, Anderson gets a best selling book, and two Wharton academics get a paper out of stating the counterpoint?!?
My brother went to Wharton. He is extremely smart. I know many of his friends from school -- they too are very intelligent folks. Wharton is not a kidding around school, it is pretty hard-core.
My brother and his friends from school mostly make stunning amounts of money. Many of them work for banks in the sorts of positions which, particularly given the recent total failure of banks at their primary wealth-creating task (risk management), might lead one to wonder if they are really responsible for enough sustainable GDP growth to justify their extraordinary compensation. To correct the first sentence in this paragraph, my brother used to make stunning amounts of money. A few years ago this very conundrum led my brother to retire, because he could not live with the disproportion between his production and his compensation. Most of his friends from school are not so infected with ethics.
Seeing this article, and the startling inconsequence of these supposed shining stars of business academia, I am inclined to agree with my brother's conclusion. And to reinforce my belief that we have, over the past 40 years, skewed the distribution of wealth toward the supposed best and brightest business thinkers, and away from all other areas of production, too heavily. Whether we, in chanting the mantra of ensuring that the business analysts and risk managers get fully compensated and motivated regardless of how outsized their compensation may appear to we mere mortals, have pushed the system much too far in that direction at the expense of compensation and motivation for those who are not business analysts and risk managers. Whether there may be forces at work which already influence cashflow in their direction, and our supposed levelling of the tax code has instead removed the normalizing force that was preventing an unhealthy portion of GDP from flowing to those with abnormally high influence on the flow of GDP -- but who, recent evidence suggests, are not really so extraordinary in their contribution to it.
Within the scope of public schools -- the implicit nature of this conversation -- children should not be indoctrinated with beliefs about what is right and wrong.
downloading movies and music from unknown sources can cost his parents a lot of money.
That is a deceptive statement that I would not want my child hear from a source which has the veneer of authority.
feeding copies of his favorite videos to the Internet can be prosecuted as a federal crime.
As is that.
resources like Pandora and Netflix play by the rules.
While they may be within the bounds of the law they most certainly do not play by the rules. My rules. Adam Smith's rules. And I don't want the school telling my children differently.
Children can be comfortable living within a rule even when they don't fully understand why it it exists.
Yes, and that is precisely why schools should not be telling them things that come from biased sources. They might believe it, and live by it. Telling them the unreasoned rules is my job (or my church's job, or whatever moral and ethical authorities I choose).
If you could live a life of luxury with dozens of (very poor) slaves serving you, why give a crap about GDP?
Because the very notion of society is inherently coupled to maximizing the total ability to satisfy wants. The ability of slaves to satisfy their wants is extremely low. So in your example, assuming two dozens of slaves: 1/25th of society would be satisfying more of his or her wants, but the total satisfaction of wants across all 25 people would be lower than if all 25 were free and receiving an equal share of compensation/productivity.
As an aside, we are not there in the United States -- over the past 40 years we have massively skewed the comp/prod ratio curve upward, which has the same systemic inefficiency problems, though to a lesser degree, as if we had slavery.
The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children?
Definitely not. They should be taught to consider the costs and benefits of things like war, social support systems to keep poor people alive and healthy, prohibition of dangerous products versus informed consent, and other trade-offs of human life versus other opportunity costs. And if they reach a different conclusion than we elders have come to accept, than it should be us who question our assumptions.
The belief that other ethnicities and people who disagree with your view should still be considered human?
No. We should teach them about how making slaves free men ultimately lead to increased GDP. About how women entering the labor force after World War II was a major boost to productivity. About all the rational reasons that prejudice is inefficient. Rational comprehension of why prejudice is bad is a much more powerful weapon than some dogmatic statement that it is "bad".
I know this is idealized, and that there will always be bias that leaks in -- but it should always be the priority to base all education on rational constructs and the leaks of dogma should be stemmed whenever discovered. Reading is important not because I like to read, but because it enables children to communicate. Math is important not because I'm a math geek, but because it enables children to solve problems.
If you believe in something, and it has a rational foundation, teach the rational foundation. If you believe something but cannot come up with a rational foundation, challenge your belief until you can find a rational basis, or until you set it aside.
Teaching beliefs instead of rational foundations is to teach children to accept ideology. Down that path lies our current political system of entrenched party-line marchers, shouting each other down at every opportunity. Closed ears, closed minds, and vitriol-spewing mouths. Ignorance and anger. It is hurting our society.
So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children?
Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.
Step 2: There is no step 2.
Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.
The insurance company claims that they would never use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable.
Consider the question at a basic level. Is your insurance company altruistic, or are they profit seeking? For many corporations the answer is the latter. In fact it may be their fiduciary duty, unless their mission statement says they will be altruistic.
Assuming the corporation is profit seeking, you can assume that your relationship is adversarial. They may consider good treatment of the customer to be a profitable thing, but the principal motivation is still profit.
Can you tell if they treat their customers well? What evidence do you have? If you have no evidence of how they treat their customers, it may indicate that such information is not generally available. If that is the case, it is safe to assume that the company is not overly concerned with customer satisfaction.
That leaves you with legal obligation. What legal binding have they entered into? Did they put the commitment not to use the information to adjust rates in writing? Are they advertising that commitment broadly?
Assuming one of those is true, also consider whether you can prove that they used the information to adjust your rate. If they adjust the rate, and you suspect it was a result of the camera, how will you demonstrate that in a court of law?
Some corporations are altruistic (a typical example being a Mom & Pop in a small community that relies upon good neighbor status). Many other corporations are amoral. Some believe that amorality is, in fact, the right objective of all corporations. If that is the case with your insurance company, you are in an adversarial relationship and should make your decision as such.
>> It is somewhat lacking in the pure entertainment aspect -- the writing isn't as tight, and the production values are clearly less polished. But it makes up for that, at least for me, in the... texture?
> The phrase you're looking for is "snobishness." There are a few less-harsh synonyms you could use, but it's the same general feeling of "my choice is better than yours" that folk who watch community theater over a TV broadcast of the same play have.
That would be if I said it was better and ended at that. I said it makes up for that, at least for me.
And that is true. For example, check out Thomas J McDonald on Major League Woodworking. What makes me like him is that he is flawed. I can see myself being him someday. The characters on Bones? They're cartoons. T-Chisel is just a regular Boston Irish Joe making some of the most amazing furniture I have ever seen. I like it because I can relate to it (not the amazing furniture part -- at least not yet -- just the occasionally stammering, sometimes upset, plain old human with flaws part)
There is one advantage of broadcast media -- ability to get information to a lot of people without burning up large amounts of Internet bandwidth. It takes up a lot less bandwidth to do one 1024p HD channel on a dedicated line than streaming the same content to millions of viewers.
I like leaf caching, wi-fi mesh, and autonomous intelligent content retrieval as the solution to this. It'll take some time to build it up, but a neighborhood shouldn't be downloading one copy of The Wood Whisperer for each woodworking household. One copy should come over the backbone and the rest should be locally distributed over the mesh.
That can't happen with the cloisterers, but it works great with content producers who want their content to reach their audience by any means necessary.
you'll want to enjoy what time you have left, and look in to other solutions for the long-haul.
I highly recommend podcasts, vidcasts, and similar. I am in the process of transitioning away from all mass media and switching entirely to user generated content. I have to say, once you get over the initial withdrawal, it is better. The stuff being produced by the indies is grittier and more real.
It is somewhat lacking in the pure entertainment aspect -- the writing isn't as tight, and the production values are clearly less polished. But it makes up for that, at least for me, in the... texture? I don't know the right word -- somebody more versed in media would be able to say it better. As an added bonus, there are a ton of podcasts focused on hobbies and how-to. As a hacker, me likey a lot.
JM2C -- as one who is making the transition, I have to say -- it is not that hard to dump big media.
What industry finds call center work so valuable that they can pay iQor enough to pay its employees so well?
Pretty much all of them. The only difference with iQor is that they are focusing their cashflow in a different way than the traditional model.
They are paying the people who directly create wealth instead of the risk managers who indirectly create wealth. Given that risk management (capital management, the executives) is becoming a rather boring and formulaic specialty, and that we recently proved that the "best" really aren't that much better at it (the bank collapse was a direct result of poor risk management), it seems reasonable to shift cashflow toward paying the direct creators of wealth and to get by with more state school BABMs and fewer Columbia MBAs.
Over the past 40 years in particular we shifted to the point of paying risk managers compensatory wages that exceed their wealth creation, while paying labor competitive wages that are vastly below their wealth creation. Perhaps that made sense when capital/risk management was a new, complex, and poorly understood science. What this company seems to be positing, and something with which I agree, is that capital/risk management is becoming formulaic, and so now a portion of the risk management compensation cashflow can be efficiently repurposed toward improving the quality of the product (hiring better communicators in this case).
I say it every time the subject comes up, online or off. It is not about whether you fall down, it is about whether you get back up. Keep pushing until we win. Even if that means going to my grave 40 years from now still pushing, and not yet having won. Never give up. Never surrender. Never sit in silence.
'When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn't really want to have displayed,' Firefox's principal designer, Alex Faaborg, tactfully explains. 'In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object.'
How about a special edition of Firefox? Firefox Privacy Edition or some such.
Prebuilt with Ghostery, Flashblock, NoScript and CookieSafe (or the best-of-breed equivalents). Each of those defaulted to max security. And with history turned off, assistive * turned off, surreptitous surveillance mode turned off, etc.
Maybe call it "Firefox For The Clueful".
It's not about fearing surveillance -- it's about recognizing that dozens of two-bit wankers have figured out how to dupe some business weenie at every corporation to stick a tracker on their website in exchange for a pretty traffic chart. Surveillance is pervasive. Firefox used to be the weapon of choice for privacy -- now it is a starting point which, with an hour or two of work, can become a privacy-enabled browser.
If such a large number of your users are saying they want a proper privacy enhanced experience, and assuming you want to extend your reach (I dig it's Open Source, and you can do whatever you want to do, and I applaud that) -- if you want that, it might make sense to make a privacy-enhanced version of Firefox. Surely Microsoft and Apple aren't going to give up their precious surveillance. It is an opportunity to totally own the clueful user demographic.
If a copyrighted work doesn't come with a fair license, don't consume it.
Simple fact is, as long as we keep feeding these trolls, they will keep biting our hands. It's not hard to give it up, particularly if you allow yourself the occasional dalliance. Prior to the Metallica/Napster debacle, I had built up a collection of more than 1,000 CDs. Since then, I have bought maybe two dozen CDs and one downloaded album. I think all the CDs were used.
Meanwhile I have more than 30 gigs of podcasts on my iPod, and another 30 gigs on my hard drive. All downloaded perfectly legally, and most of it is an excellent replacement for the lackluster material coming from the gated cloisters.
As an added advantage, I'm spending a helluva lot more time listening to educational material about hobbies I am interested in, and a lot less time sucking on candy-media.
Give 'em what they want. They don't want us to use their media the way we want to use it? Fuck 'em.
How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick?
Very easy. While auditors tend to do a good job of detecting whether a report is realistic, their main objective is to get you to sign off saying, "This is what we do." Then, if you do not do that, you are personally liable.
They aren't detectives (though they often do some of that as well), they are guarantors of accountability. Your-ass-uncoverers for the CYA generation, if you will.
You might also want to consider that one of the reasons these multinationals are now leaving the US is due to more favorable tax rates available in countries like India and China.
While that is true, you seem not to be thinking it through.
Taxes on labor in China and India are far lower than in the United States. Therefore, they shift their labor cashflow to China and India.
Taxes on high compensation and capital gains in the United States are far lower than in China and India. Therefore, they keep their executives in the United States.
Think that through. It is, indeed, exactly as you say. But I don't think it means what you are hoping it means. Think about how our tax policy is different than in communist China. Are you really advocating a tax policy that more closely resembles that of China to eliminate the differential benefits for corporate operational cashflow between our two nations? Take a few minutes, think it through. What you are saying is true, but you seem to be tossing out the catch-line without actually considering what it means.
Secondly, you might want to consider that the subsequent economic boom of the 50's was due in a large part to the fact that our largest possible competitor, Europe, was devastated by that war, and didn't recover for decades. It had little if anything to do with the tax rate.
You may want to consider that those who try to defend your position often say, "If we have a more progressive tax policy it will destroy the United States!" No, it will not. We know it will not, because we know it did not.
Are there other things that affect the economy? Of course, as will there be other things that affect the economy in the future. You can see one of the really big ones by looking at the GDP during the 60s and early 70s. With a severely demoralizing pair of back to back wars we still managed to have very rapid economic expansion. Why? Cheap energy.
Of course other things affect the economy. What I am saying is that the line, "We will collapse if you make it any harder for corps to pay senior management $50m/year," is false, as evidenced by our own practical test.
Further, consider the effects of having significant policy-based friction in moving from the sub-$100k class to the super-$250k class. Consider what you might expect to happen if you had a flat tax on compensation above $250k. Consider what would happen if you had a capital gains tax rate that was lower than the top marginal income tax rate.
What sort of symptoms would you expect to result from those tax policies? Just for a few minutes, think about it.
Might those policies not result in some of the symptoms we see in our ailing economy today? For a few minutes, do not jump into your reaction that defends your position. Take some serious time out, suspend your preconceptions, and just think about it.
Remaining attached to your particular position without thinking it through is a severe threat to the United States. For the love of country, stop chanting the party line for a minute and think through the causes and effects.
Following the Great Depression and World War II, the leaders of our society decided to start taxing the wealthy more and more, while using that money for the betterment of society as a whole. It was called the New Deal. And this policy worked quite well, propelling America into a period of rapid economic growth, while at the same time creating a profound sense of economic security for the middle class.
Your post presents a very important issue. I want to provide citation to reinforce your point.
To those who doubt the above. Please first take a look at the calculation of "Marginal Tax Rates":
"The marginal tax rate may increase or decrease as income or consumption increases, although in most countries the tax rate is (in principle) progressive. In such cases, the average tax rate will be lower than the marginal tax rate: an individual may have a marginal tax rate of 45%, but pay average tax of half this amount."
Now consider the marginal tax rate calculation for the labor tax code of 1954. A few months ago I added the column for GDP adjusted income. That column is misleading. The correct deflator to use when adjusting individual income is PPC (Product Per Capita, AKA: GDP Per Capita)
Now, calculate the actual tax rate tables, being careful to apply marginal tax calculation.
Where do the tax lines cross? Above what level are you better under our current tax policy than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history? Or, conversely, below what income level are you worse under the current tax structure than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history?
The answer was a bit of a surprise to me. It is $251,000. That is the inflection point. Why does that surprise me? Two reasons: First, it's a bit lower than I thought (I had been mentally using GDP until tonight -- but that is not the correct deflator for income per person). Second, and more importantly, it is the number Obama has used several times when referencing the dividing line between rich and not rich. Is that intentional? Did he (or his economic advisor) reach that conclusion by doing the exact same calculation? Perhaps -- given that 250,000 is a number commonly used when pulling figures out of one's ass, it is entirely possible that it is just coincidence. Still, it makes me wonder...
But I digress. In short, people making less than $250,000 (about 95% of the population) are paying a greater percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Said differently, people making more than $250,000 (about 5% of the population) are paying a lesser percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Please note: This is assuming that you completely discount capital gains, the distribution and tax policy changes of which shift the inflection point much further in favor of the very few, very wealthy.
One More Time: During the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history our tax policy was enormously more progressive than it is today.
For further reading, including statistics that show the gargantuan concentration of wealth that has occurred as the tax policy shifted, see Piketty Saez 2007.
Actually I agree about Ford -- my post was meant as a joking-but-true jab at GM and Chrysler. I know an engineer who works for Ford and he has been quick to point this out whenever I crack on the auto industry. Given recent performance, and that they started targeting Toyota when Honda was still everyone's darling, I believe it. Case in point: When I bought my Scion xB, my second choice was the Focus SVT (I couldn't justify the performance -- I have a motorcycle for fun).
All of which is to say, I think you are right. I was just jabbing at them, for fun, and it does ring true about GM and Chrysler, as you note.
I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
Indeed. But there is money to be made in that observation -- get in early on the next wave of "In-house dedicated hardware is the perfect answer to every problem!" Should be rolling in about two years after the cloud becomes mainstream and people realize it isn't the perfect answer to every problem.:)
If we can do it I don't see any reason why major auto manufacturers can't do it since we used their parts.
Oh you poor, silly, person. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that auto manufacturers hire people to think about new practical functionality. Alas, no. Their main focus is advertising. More woodgrain leather seats and movie-tie-in badgework. Actual value can only move so many cars, but elevating irrational demand? -- that is an idea with legs.
If you could lose your job over what you do at Burning Man (and I really hope this isn't the case), then perhaps you should stop and consider which is more important to you, your job or doing this behavior. And then once you make your decision, live with the consequences instead of trying to blame someone else for your behavior.
That is fine for me, living in San Francisco, where I do not risk my job. And it is great for someone who is free to move to somewhere that is more accepting. Many people do not have that ability -- for many reasons. Still others don't even know that they would enjoy such liberty if they had it. Many do not even realize that they are subjecting themselves to moral inhibition, because they have never seen a culture where people do not.
The procession from being morally... let's say devout for lack of a better term, to being morally liberated starts with seeing what moral liberty is. If one is living in a morally devout culture and has been raised morally devout (as I was) it can be impossible to see beyond ones perspective without exposing oneself to alternative culture. Simultaneously, if one is living in a culture which inhibits moral liberty, one cannot expose oneself to it without facing significant short-term risk. That is, unless one chooses to do so surreptitiously.
Would it be better for our society to universally accept moral liberty? Of course it would. But the path to that end is paved with giving more people the opportunity to experience moral liberty -- without having to make significant sacrifices in their lives in the short term to do so.
It's individuals somehow deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others but to not actually do so!
Hmmm...
deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others
vs.
but to not actually conform to the morals of others
Which are you saying is the bad part?
I'm going to go out on a limb and make an assumption. I am going to assume that you are not saying the latter is a bad thing. If that is what you are saying is bad, well, then you already understand from the inside why we don't feel entirely comfortable appearing to reject the morals of people who feel that way. But let's assume that is not what you are saying.
So you are saying that the problem is people "deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others."
I agree. That is a problem.
And if you were far enough outside the social norm, and lived in a community that was sufficiently restrictive about social norms (which comprise at least 50% of this country), you would understand why not everyone feels free to be themselves. I wound up moving to San Francisco, where I can mostly be myself much of the time. But even here there are things that are not OK. There are people I work with and am friends with who only grudgingly accept that I am a Burner, and who definitely do not understand. They are good people, but they have a different view on morality than I -- much like I am a good person but I have my own views of what is morally unacceptable (the RIAA, patent trolls, etc). Should we choose to square off and reject each other? I think that is a path toward lack of understanding. I'd rather be friends with them, try to understand them, and have them try to understand me. I think it is happening, and I hope it is spreading further and deeper, but if you think we are, from coast to coast, at the end of moral prejudice, well, I think you are deeply misinformed.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why not claim the slaves are not part of society (like cattle)?
Hunh. I must reconsider my position. You raise a very strong point. Thank you!
In the book, Anderson focuses on the definition of hits in absolute terms such as the top 10 or top 1,000 products, while Netessine and Tan argue that, to take growing product variety into account, one has to define popularity in relative terms, such as the top 1% or top 10% of products, to properly assess the presence or absence of the Long Tail.
So let me see if I get this:
Anderson says, "Assume a bell curve with a sufficiently large ordinal scale X axis. Select a sufficiently narrow segment in the center. The area under the curve not included in that segment will be greater than the area under the curve included in that segment."
Netissine and Tan respond, "However: Select a segment in the center whose width is a fixed percentage of the ordinal scale of the X axis. Select a percentage which is sufficiently large. Now the area under the curve in the included segment will be greater than the area not included."
For this, Anderson gets a best selling book, and two Wharton academics get a paper out of stating the counterpoint?!?
My brother went to Wharton. He is extremely smart. I know many of his friends from school -- they too are very intelligent folks. Wharton is not a kidding around school, it is pretty hard-core.
My brother and his friends from school mostly make stunning amounts of money. Many of them work for banks in the sorts of positions which, particularly given the recent total failure of banks at their primary wealth-creating task (risk management), might lead one to wonder if they are really responsible for enough sustainable GDP growth to justify their extraordinary compensation. To correct the first sentence in this paragraph, my brother used to make stunning amounts of money. A few years ago this very conundrum led my brother to retire, because he could not live with the disproportion between his production and his compensation. Most of his friends from school are not so infected with ethics.
Seeing this article, and the startling inconsequence of these supposed shining stars of business academia, I am inclined to agree with my brother's conclusion. And to reinforce my belief that we have, over the past 40 years, skewed the distribution of wealth toward the supposed best and brightest business thinkers, and away from all other areas of production, too heavily. Whether we, in chanting the mantra of ensuring that the business analysts and risk managers get fully compensated and motivated regardless of how outsized their compensation may appear to we mere mortals, have pushed the system much too far in that direction at the expense of compensation and motivation for those who are not business analysts and risk managers. Whether there may be forces at work which already influence cashflow in their direction, and our supposed levelling of the tax code has instead removed the normalizing force that was preventing an unhealthy portion of GDP from flowing to those with abnormally high influence on the flow of GDP -- but who, recent evidence suggests, are not really so extraordinary in their contribution to it.
Within the scope of public schools -- the implicit nature of this conversation -- children should not be indoctrinated with beliefs about what is right and wrong.
downloading movies and music from unknown sources can cost his parents a lot of money.
That is a deceptive statement that I would not want my child hear from a source which has the veneer of authority.
feeding copies of his favorite videos to the Internet can be prosecuted as a federal crime.
As is that.
resources like Pandora and Netflix play by the rules.
While they may be within the bounds of the law they most certainly do not play by the rules. My rules. Adam Smith's rules. And I don't want the school telling my children differently.
Children can be comfortable living within a rule even when they don't fully understand why it it exists.
Yes, and that is precisely why schools should not be telling them things that come from biased sources. They might believe it, and live by it. Telling them the unreasoned rules is my job (or my church's job, or whatever moral and ethical authorities I choose).
If you could live a life of luxury with dozens of (very poor) slaves serving you, why give a crap about GDP?
Because the very notion of society is inherently coupled to maximizing the total ability to satisfy wants. The ability of slaves to satisfy their wants is extremely low. So in your example, assuming two dozens of slaves: 1/25th of society would be satisfying more of his or her wants, but the total satisfaction of wants across all 25 people would be lower than if all 25 were free and receiving an equal share of compensation/productivity.
As an aside, we are not there in the United States -- over the past 40 years we have massively skewed the comp/prod ratio curve upward, which has the same systemic inefficiency problems, though to a lesser degree, as if we had slavery.
The belief that human life should be valued, even when you don't directly benefit from it yourself, shouldn't be indoctrinated to children?
Definitely not. They should be taught to consider the costs and benefits of things like war, social support systems to keep poor people alive and healthy, prohibition of dangerous products versus informed consent, and other trade-offs of human life versus other opportunity costs. And if they reach a different conclusion than we elders have come to accept, than it should be us who question our assumptions.
The belief that other ethnicities and people who disagree with your view should still be considered human?
No. We should teach them about how making slaves free men ultimately lead to increased GDP. About how women entering the labor force after World War II was a major boost to productivity. About all the rational reasons that prejudice is inefficient. Rational comprehension of why prejudice is bad is a much more powerful weapon than some dogmatic statement that it is "bad".
I know this is idealized, and that there will always be bias that leaks in -- but it should always be the priority to base all education on rational constructs and the leaks of dogma should be stemmed whenever discovered. Reading is important not because I like to read, but because it enables children to communicate. Math is important not because I'm a math geek, but because it enables children to solve problems.
If you believe in something, and it has a rational foundation, teach the rational foundation. If you believe something but cannot come up with a rational foundation, challenge your belief until you can find a rational basis, or until you set it aside.
Teaching beliefs instead of rational foundations is to teach children to accept ideology. Down that path lies our current political system of entrenched party-line marchers, shouting each other down at every opportunity. Closed ears, closed minds, and vitriol-spewing mouths. Ignorance and anger. It is hurting our society.
So given the above information, would you please outline how you would explain this to children?
Step 1: Teach them critical thinking, instead of doctrine.
Step 2: There is no step 2.
Children should learn to think. With regard to controversial topics like copyright law or health care legislation, they should be encouraged to seek broad resources and to judge for themselves. They should never, under any circumstances, be indoctrinated into any belief. Not even beliefs about fair use, of which I am a rabid supporter.
The insurance company claims that they would never use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable.
Consider the question at a basic level. Is your insurance company altruistic, or are they profit seeking? For many corporations the answer is the latter. In fact it may be their fiduciary duty, unless their mission statement says they will be altruistic.
Assuming the corporation is profit seeking, you can assume that your relationship is adversarial. They may consider good treatment of the customer to be a profitable thing, but the principal motivation is still profit.
Can you tell if they treat their customers well? What evidence do you have? If you have no evidence of how they treat their customers, it may indicate that such information is not generally available. If that is the case, it is safe to assume that the company is not overly concerned with customer satisfaction.
That leaves you with legal obligation. What legal binding have they entered into? Did they put the commitment not to use the information to adjust rates in writing? Are they advertising that commitment broadly?
Assuming one of those is true, also consider whether you can prove that they used the information to adjust your rate. If they adjust the rate, and you suspect it was a result of the camera, how will you demonstrate that in a court of law?
Some corporations are altruistic (a typical example being a Mom & Pop in a small community that relies upon good neighbor status). Many other corporations are amoral. Some believe that amorality is, in fact, the right objective of all corporations. If that is the case with your insurance company, you are in an adversarial relationship and should make your decision as such.
>> It is somewhat lacking in the pure entertainment aspect -- the writing isn't as tight, and the production values are clearly less polished. But it makes up for that, at least for me, in the... texture?
> The phrase you're looking for is "snobishness." There are a few less-harsh synonyms you could use, but it's the same general feeling of "my choice is better than yours" that folk who watch community theater over a TV broadcast of the same play have.
That would be if I said it was better and ended at that. I said it makes up for that, at least for me.
And that is true. For example, check out Thomas J McDonald on Major League Woodworking. What makes me like him is that he is flawed. I can see myself being him someday. The characters on Bones? They're cartoons. T-Chisel is just a regular Boston Irish Joe making some of the most amazing furniture I have ever seen. I like it because I can relate to it (not the amazing furniture part -- at least not yet -- just the occasionally stammering, sometimes upset, plain old human with flaws part)
There is one advantage of broadcast media -- ability to get information to a lot of people without burning up large amounts of Internet bandwidth. It takes up a lot less bandwidth to do one 1024p HD channel on a dedicated line than streaming the same content to millions of viewers.
I like leaf caching, wi-fi mesh, and autonomous intelligent content retrieval as the solution to this. It'll take some time to build it up, but a neighborhood shouldn't be downloading one copy of The Wood Whisperer for each woodworking household. One copy should come over the backbone and the rest should be locally distributed over the mesh.
That can't happen with the cloisterers, but it works great with content producers who want their content to reach their audience by any means necessary.
you'll want to enjoy what time you have left, and look in to other solutions for the long-haul.
I highly recommend podcasts, vidcasts, and similar. I am in the process of transitioning away from all mass media and switching entirely to user generated content. I have to say, once you get over the initial withdrawal, it is better. The stuff being produced by the indies is grittier and more real.
It is somewhat lacking in the pure entertainment aspect -- the writing isn't as tight, and the production values are clearly less polished. But it makes up for that, at least for me, in the... texture? I don't know the right word -- somebody more versed in media would be able to say it better. As an added bonus, there are a ton of podcasts focused on hobbies and how-to. As a hacker, me likey a lot.
JM2C -- as one who is making the transition, I have to say -- it is not that hard to dump big media.
What industry finds call center work so valuable that they can pay iQor enough to pay its employees so well?
Pretty much all of them. The only difference with iQor is that they are focusing their cashflow in a different way than the traditional model.
They are paying the people who directly create wealth instead of the risk managers who indirectly create wealth. Given that risk management (capital management, the executives) is becoming a rather boring and formulaic specialty, and that we recently proved that the "best" really aren't that much better at it (the bank collapse was a direct result of poor risk management), it seems reasonable to shift cashflow toward paying the direct creators of wealth and to get by with more state school BABMs and fewer Columbia MBAs.
Over the past 40 years in particular we shifted to the point of paying risk managers compensatory wages that exceed their wealth creation, while paying labor competitive wages that are vastly below their wealth creation. Perhaps that made sense when capital/risk management was a new, complex, and poorly understood science. What this company seems to be positing, and something with which I agree, is that capital/risk management is becoming formulaic, and so now a portion of the risk management compensation cashflow can be efficiently repurposed toward improving the quality of the product (hiring better communicators in this case).
Is there really anything scientific or technological that we cant do vastly better now that 1906?
My guess is yes, but I can't come up with a good example at the moment.
Here's an unbroken 1960's land speed record set by one guy with very little money working in his garage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Munro
Very fun flick too, if you like hackers.
I say it every time the subject comes up, online or off. It is not about whether you fall down, it is about whether you get back up. Keep pushing until we win. Even if that means going to my grave 40 years from now still pushing, and not yet having won. Never give up. Never surrender. Never sit in silence.
'When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn't really want to have displayed,' Firefox's principal designer, Alex Faaborg, tactfully explains. 'In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object.'
How about a special edition of Firefox? Firefox Privacy Edition or some such.
Prebuilt with Ghostery, Flashblock, NoScript and CookieSafe (or the best-of-breed equivalents). Each of those defaulted to max security. And with history turned off, assistive * turned off, surreptitous surveillance mode turned off, etc.
Maybe call it "Firefox For The Clueful".
It's not about fearing surveillance -- it's about recognizing that dozens of two-bit wankers have figured out how to dupe some business weenie at every corporation to stick a tracker on their website in exchange for a pretty traffic chart. Surveillance is pervasive. Firefox used to be the weapon of choice for privacy -- now it is a starting point which, with an hour or two of work, can become a privacy-enabled browser.
If such a large number of your users are saying they want a proper privacy enhanced experience, and assuming you want to extend your reach (I dig it's Open Source, and you can do whatever you want to do, and I applaud that) -- if you want that, it might make sense to make a privacy-enhanced version of Firefox. Surely Microsoft and Apple aren't going to give up their precious surveillance. It is an opportunity to totally own the clueful user demographic.
Just a thought.
I agree we need a more pervasive boycott, and we need it to spread more rapidly.
That is why I posted a call to boycott. Spread the word. :)
If a copyrighted work doesn't come with a fair license, don't consume it.
Simple fact is, as long as we keep feeding these trolls, they will keep biting our hands. It's not hard to give it up, particularly if you allow yourself the occasional dalliance. Prior to the Metallica/Napster debacle, I had built up a collection of more than 1,000 CDs. Since then, I have bought maybe two dozen CDs and one downloaded album. I think all the CDs were used.
Meanwhile I have more than 30 gigs of podcasts on my iPod, and another 30 gigs on my hard drive. All downloaded perfectly legally, and most of it is an excellent replacement for the lackluster material coming from the gated cloisters.
As an added advantage, I'm spending a helluva lot more time listening to educational material about hobbies I am interested in, and a lot less time sucking on candy-media.
Give 'em what they want. They don't want us to use their media the way we want to use it? Fuck 'em.
If "Net Neutrality"= "treat traffic the same regardless of protocol", then BAD.
Can you explain how to tell what protocol is being carried over a TLS connection?
How easy is it to find auditors who can be fooled by such a simple trick?
Very easy. While auditors tend to do a good job of detecting whether a report is realistic, their main objective is to get you to sign off saying, "This is what we do." Then, if you do not do that, you are personally liable.
They aren't detectives (though they often do some of that as well), they are guarantors of accountability. Your-ass-uncoverers for the CYA generation, if you will.
You might also want to consider that one of the reasons these multinationals are now leaving the US is due to more favorable tax rates available in countries like India and China.
While that is true, you seem not to be thinking it through.
Taxes on labor in China and India are far lower than in the United States. Therefore, they shift their labor cashflow to China and India.
Taxes on high compensation and capital gains in the United States are far lower than in China and India. Therefore, they keep their executives in the United States.
Think that through. It is, indeed, exactly as you say. But I don't think it means what you are hoping it means. Think about how our tax policy is different than in communist China. Are you really advocating a tax policy that more closely resembles that of China to eliminate the differential benefits for corporate operational cashflow between our two nations? Take a few minutes, think it through. What you are saying is true, but you seem to be tossing out the catch-line without actually considering what it means.
Secondly, you might want to consider that the subsequent economic boom of the 50's was due in a large part to the fact that our largest possible competitor, Europe, was devastated by that war, and didn't recover for decades. It had little if anything to do with the tax rate.
You may want to consider that those who try to defend your position often say, "If we have a more progressive tax policy it will destroy the United States!" No, it will not. We know it will not, because we know it did not.
Are there other things that affect the economy? Of course, as will there be other things that affect the economy in the future. You can see one of the really big ones by looking at the GDP during the 60s and early 70s. With a severely demoralizing pair of back to back wars we still managed to have very rapid economic expansion. Why? Cheap energy.
Of course other things affect the economy. What I am saying is that the line, "We will collapse if you make it any harder for corps to pay senior management $50m/year," is false, as evidenced by our own practical test.
Further, consider the effects of having significant policy-based friction in moving from the sub-$100k class to the super-$250k class. Consider what you might expect to happen if you had a flat tax on compensation above $250k. Consider what would happen if you had a capital gains tax rate that was lower than the top marginal income tax rate.
What sort of symptoms would you expect to result from those tax policies? Just for a few minutes, think about it.
Might those policies not result in some of the symptoms we see in our ailing economy today? For a few minutes, do not jump into your reaction that defends your position. Take some serious time out, suspend your preconceptions, and just think about it.
Remaining attached to your particular position without thinking it through is a severe threat to the United States. For the love of country, stop chanting the party line for a minute and think through the causes and effects.
Following the Great Depression and World War II, the leaders of our society decided to start taxing the wealthy more and more, while using that money for the betterment of society as a whole. It was called the New Deal. And this policy worked quite well, propelling America into a period of rapid economic growth, while at the same time creating a profound sense of economic security for the middle class.
Your post presents a very important issue. I want to provide citation to reinforce your point.
To those who doubt the above. Please first take a look at the calculation of "Marginal Tax Rates":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_tax_rate
Specifically, please note:
"The marginal tax rate may increase or decrease as income or consumption increases, although in most countries the tax rate is (in principle) progressive. In such cases, the average tax rate will be lower than the marginal tax rate: an individual may have a marginal tax rate of 45%, but pay average tax of half this amount."
Now consider the marginal tax rate calculation for the labor tax code of 1954. A few months ago I added the column for GDP adjusted income. That column is misleading. The correct deflator to use when adjusting individual income is PPC (Product Per Capita, AKA: GDP Per Capita)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_of_1986
Now consider the marginal tax rate calculation for the labor tax code of 2003 (the most recent year for which Wikipedia has the table):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_and_Growth_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2003#Single
Now, calculate the actual tax rate tables, being careful to apply marginal tax calculation.
Where do the tax lines cross? Above what level are you better under our current tax policy than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history? Or, conversely, below what income level are you worse under the current tax structure than during the period of greatest economic expansion in United States history?
The answer was a bit of a surprise to me. It is $251,000. That is the inflection point. Why does that surprise me? Two reasons: First, it's a bit lower than I thought (I had been mentally using GDP until tonight -- but that is not the correct deflator for income per person). Second, and more importantly, it is the number Obama has used several times when referencing the dividing line between rich and not rich. Is that intentional? Did he (or his economic advisor) reach that conclusion by doing the exact same calculation? Perhaps -- given that 250,000 is a number commonly used when pulling figures out of one's ass, it is entirely possible that it is just coincidence. Still, it makes me wonder...
But I digress. In short, people making less than $250,000 (about 95% of the population) are paying a greater percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Said differently, people making more than $250,000 (about 5% of the population) are paying a lesser percentage of their income as taxes than they were during the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history.
Please note: This is assuming that you completely discount capital gains, the distribution and tax policy changes of which shift the inflection point much further in favor of the very few, very wealthy.
One More Time: During the greatest period of economic expansion in United States history our tax policy was enormously more progressive than it is today.
For further reading, including statistics that show the gargantuan concentration of wealth that has occurred as the tax policy shifted, see Piketty Saez 2007.
Actually I agree about Ford -- my post was meant as a joking-but-true jab at GM and Chrysler. I know an engineer who works for Ford and he has been quick to point this out whenever I crack on the auto industry. Given recent performance, and that they started targeting Toyota when Honda was still everyone's darling, I believe it. Case in point: When I bought my Scion xB, my second choice was the Focus SVT (I couldn't justify the performance -- I have a motorcycle for fun).
All of which is to say, I think you are right. I was just jabbing at them, for fun, and it does ring true about GM and Chrysler, as you note.
I can't help thinking this is just thin-client + mainframe again, and just like every other time the model has come around, it's being pushed as the future.
Indeed. But there is money to be made in that observation -- get in early on the next wave of "In-house dedicated hardware is the perfect answer to every problem!" Should be rolling in about two years after the cloud becomes mainstream and people realize it isn't the perfect answer to every problem. :)
If we can do it I don't see any reason why major auto manufacturers can't do it since we used their parts.
Oh you poor, silly, person. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that auto manufacturers hire people to think about new practical functionality. Alas, no. Their main focus is advertising. More woodgrain leather seats and movie-tie-in badgework. Actual value can only move so many cars, but elevating irrational demand? -- that is an idea with legs.
If you could lose your job over what you do at Burning Man (and I really hope this isn't the case), then perhaps you should stop and consider which is more important to you, your job or doing this behavior. And then once you make your decision, live with the consequences instead of trying to blame someone else for your behavior.
That is fine for me, living in San Francisco, where I do not risk my job. And it is great for someone who is free to move to somewhere that is more accepting. Many people do not have that ability -- for many reasons. Still others don't even know that they would enjoy such liberty if they had it. Many do not even realize that they are subjecting themselves to moral inhibition, because they have never seen a culture where people do not.
The procession from being morally... let's say devout for lack of a better term, to being morally liberated starts with seeing what moral liberty is. If one is living in a morally devout culture and has been raised morally devout (as I was) it can be impossible to see beyond ones perspective without exposing oneself to alternative culture. Simultaneously, if one is living in a culture which inhibits moral liberty, one cannot expose oneself to it without facing significant short-term risk. That is, unless one chooses to do so surreptitiously.
Would it be better for our society to universally accept moral liberty? Of course it would. But the path to that end is paved with giving more people the opportunity to experience moral liberty -- without having to make significant sacrifices in their lives in the short term to do so.
It's individuals somehow deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others but to not actually do so!
Hmmm...
deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others
vs.
but to not actually conform to the morals of others
Which are you saying is the bad part?
I'm going to go out on a limb and make an assumption. I am going to assume that you are not saying the latter is a bad thing. If that is what you are saying is bad, well, then you already understand from the inside why we don't feel entirely comfortable appearing to reject the morals of people who feel that way. But let's assume that is not what you are saying.
So you are saying that the problem is people "deciding it is important to them to appear to be conforming to the morals of others."
I agree. That is a problem.
And if you were far enough outside the social norm, and lived in a community that was sufficiently restrictive about social norms (which comprise at least 50% of this country), you would understand why not everyone feels free to be themselves. I wound up moving to San Francisco, where I can mostly be myself much of the time. But even here there are things that are not OK. There are people I work with and am friends with who only grudgingly accept that I am a Burner, and who definitely do not understand. They are good people, but they have a different view on morality than I -- much like I am a good person but I have my own views of what is morally unacceptable (the RIAA, patent trolls, etc). Should we choose to square off and reject each other? I think that is a path toward lack of understanding. I'd rather be friends with them, try to understand them, and have them try to understand me. I think it is happening, and I hope it is spreading further and deeper, but if you think we are, from coast to coast, at the end of moral prejudice, well, I think you are deeply misinformed.