But situation 2 is -always- a question of allocation of resources. Because we sure as hell do *NOT* live in a world where every conceivable useful job is already being performed, so there's nothing to do except relax in luxury for the remaining 18.
And if we *did* live in that world, would it really be so bad ? Is work a goal in itself, or is it just a necessary evil in order to produce the necessary goods and services ?
I don't know how familiar you are with the "Nordic model" in politics ? It's a mix-and-match model like I think all functionining models. Pure ideologies (be it Rand or Marx) sound attractive and simple on paper, but break down in reality.
We've got property rights. We've got capitalism. We've got free markets. But property-rights are not unlimited. Capitalism is not unfettered. And the markets have limits.
Wikipedia explains the concept well:
The Nordic model refers to the economic and social models of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland). This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilizing the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy.
A large part of the reason we're wealthy despite the generous welfare is precisely this: the welfare is specifically targeted at increasing individual autonomy and increasing workforce participation. As a consequence we have, for example, much higher female workforce-participation than most other countries.
So yes, we've got high taxes. But much of them is used to buy me freedom. For example, knowing that the health of me and my family is taken care of, regardless of what kind of choices I make about employment, significantly adds to freedom. As does policies that make it possible (but not mandatory) to combine careers with children, for example.
Practically ? My wife and I gross about $20K/month - and yes we pay high taxes on it, about 30% thus we take-home "only" about $14K/month - but that doesn't seem like such a bad deal at *all* when you consider that for our taxes we got more than a full year of paid parental leave on each of the 2 occasions when we got kids - and that the state is now sponsoring high-quality childcare-facilities for the same kids to the tune of $1500/kid/month. And for example saving for college is a no-issue here since those are cost-free.
Thing is, it's a lot -cheaper- to own a computer than to rent one, especially since there's a huge surplus of second-hand computers.
If you cannot afford even that, you're better off doing without a computer at all until you've saved up enough. (save the money you'd otherwise pay to rent a computer!)
This is an interesting discussion, and you're right. The problem with the "let everyone work shorter hours then" idea is that the tendency is for new ways of production to require a lower count of people -- but also more educated specialists.
That is, while previously you needed 50 guys who could use a shovel, you thereafter need one guy who's an ace machine-operator for a ditch. For building a door you no longer need a dozen guys who can use a manual saw, you need one guy who can program the CNC efficiently. And since education ain't free it's a much more expensive solution to have 4 guys work 2 hours each, instead of one guy work full days.
My opinion is that capitalism, and letting the owners benefit, is the best system we've found for creating wealth, and for optimising production. (the same thing really!)
But it sucks at distributing that wealth, and we need mechanisms for that.
I'm thus one of those rare creatures who's a fairly high earner, yet support higher tax-rates and fairly generous benefits to everyone. (household-income around $225K/year puts us at upper-middle here in Norway)
I don't see freeloaders as such a problem. Who cares if lots of people freeload as long as the benefits to working hard are sufficient to motivate a sufficient number of qualified people to produce all the products and services needed ?
As it turns out, we *are* trying to reduce freeloading in Norway currently, but that's motivated primarily by the fact that we're lacking workers. That's right, there's substantially more unfilled positions than there are unemployed people seeking jobs. Under *those* circumstances it makes sense to try to increase the rewards for working. (for example, retired people may now, without limitation, work and earn money, with -no- reduction in their pensions, which wasn't previously the case)
Agreed. For normal people, housing is a *cost*. You need adequate housing, and if that's available for less, it's a good thing for those who need to buy it.
Lower prices on housing, is essentially only a bad thing for those people who lent out money with houses as security - those people now have less security than they used to have, i.e. they might not get their money back.
But whenever you lend out money, there's -always- a risk that the money ain't coming back. This risk is the reason you demand a interest that is higher than the one you can get in the bank. Essentially, I might say: I can get 3% interest in the bank, but if you pay me 5% I'll let you borrow the money instead, the extra 2% is there because of the higher risk that you'll default.
The real problem is "too big to fail" and insufficient capitalisation-demands. When you make a game where the rules for gambling are that wins can be kept (without limitation) whereas losses beyond a certain (low) level is absorbed by others, it's not odd that people choose to gamble.
Does it pay to take a bet that has 25% chance of earning a million, and 75% chance of losing a million ? Not normally no, it's a bad deal. But if I can start a company, using $20K of my own money as equity, and then have the company take that gamble, then I'm in the black:
I now have a 25% chance of gaining a million, and a 75% chance of losing not a million, but merely the $20K that is my equity. (the company goes bankrupt, the rest of the loss is absorbed by its creditors)
First, to produce the goods and services we need for a (preferably) comfortable life. If we want to eat bread - that bread has to be produced somehow. In sum total, humanity by mathemathical nessecity must produce the same amount of goods and services that we consume.
For this first purpose, it doesn't matter if the bread for a town is baked by 20 people, or by 2 people tending an advanced bread-making-machine.
But work has a second effect: It gives everyone something to sell (his work-hours) and thus acts as a mechanism for distributing wealth. There is no problem with the bread-making-machine for production itself, but if the 18 previous-bakers are now unemployed and unable to secure sufficient income then *that* is a problem.
This is a distribution-problem, and not a production-problem.
It depends. Signaling poverty will drive down prices. So if houses are poorly maintained and have yards full of junk, for example, prices will be lower.
But a well-maintained but "peculiar" house ? No, that'd not make me skeptical in the least. If anything, I'd probably consider it a likely home of creative types of people, but people who care about maintaining their property well, and I don't see what should be problematic about that.
But most HOAs are opposite: you'll probably get away with waiting 5 years too long with repainting the thing, but you'll probably -not- get away with painting the house purple.
And yeah, I've purchased a house. Twice in the last 5 years, even.
It's very odd. There's no HOAs here in Norway, atleast if they exist, they must be uncommon seeing as I've never come into contact with one.
But even in the absence of one, it's not as if one can do ANYTHING. You're still restricted both by law, and by municipal regulation.
Yeah, those are wide freedoms. But why not ? Ain't USA supposed to be land of the free ? Yes this means I can paint my house purple if I damn well please, but guess what, it's -MY- house. Your property-value sank (a tiny fraction of what mine did) ? Tough luck !
Yeah, but it may well be later rather than sooner. There's glazed clay-tiles on my house which is built in 1980, which is 30 years ago, and they're holding up fine, I'd not be surprised if the roofing is okay for another few decades.
Not really. Soldiers and/or armed guards are most commonly used as deterrent. That is, their purpose is to discourage other people from getting the idea that one might get away with certain behaviour.
The hosting-facility most definitely do NOT want shooting to occur, inside or ourside the facility. The guards are thus there not for the purpose of shooting. They are there for discouraging creative entrepeneurs from getting certain classes of ideas.
I'm not saying it's not reasonable to feel uncomfortable about people using assault-rifles to assure you're not doing anything you shouldn't. But that's the point: to discourage you from dumb ideas. If the rifle is ever fired, that's a failure, not a success. (either it didn't discourage as intended, or else, it was fired in error, both would be bad)
Any statement that starts with "Europe handles this through..." is misleading. Thing is, Europe consists of a multitude of very different countries inside and outside the European Union.
Any analysis that dumps Sweden, Italy, Greece and Norway in the same basket, is going to be pointless since the countries have essentially nothing in common, except geographical region.
At first, yes. The effect is well-understood and well-researched, try asking google or wikipedia about "demographic transition".
Primitive societies, have high birth-rates, but also high death-rates, then living-conditions improve, and death-rates fall, but birth-rates remain, leading to population-growth. In the next-phase births fall too though, and so the new steady state is low-deaths AND low births.
Many wealthy nations today have birth-rates *below* the replacement-level, this is true for large parts of Europe, for example.
Is that even a question ? Offcourse you do. I deleted my facebook-profile more than a year ago.
If someone doesn't want to know me, because I don't use Facebook, then it's my opinion that I'm better off without them, I don't need "friends" of that quality.
One is the raw-amount, simply the number of sensors multiplied with the frequency each sample at multiplied with the size of each sample.
But the article itself say they filter and store only the interesting stuff, which is, as we can see from the later numbers, a triflingly small fraction of the entirety.
A camera that can do full-HD at 30fps captures 186MB/s afterall, but it does not follow that a facility with 3 such security-cameras need to store however many petabytes that becomes, in order to have a recording of the burglars.
Consumer knowledge and choice is needed, agreed. If the consumer both know about the differences, and are given a real choice, then sometimes, the better option wins out.
Electrical applicances have an energy-rating here, from A to F, where C represents average energy-consumption. Offcourse it *is* somewhat more expensive to make a refrigirator say, better insulated to earn an A. But in this case consumers have a choice and are informed. The end-result is that 95% of the sold appliances are grade A.
Indeed. Given a choice between a $299 box that eats electricity for $100 a year, and a $339 box that has the same functionality, but consumes only half the electricity, most users will go for the first.
It's partly that users are dumb, and partly that the information needed isn't easily available. The situation would improve to *some* degree if typical energy-consumption pro year was required info on the price-tag.
It needs to run while recording, sure. But these typically don't do this 24x7x365.
When they don't, they could spin down the hard-disc, and for that matter go into sleep-mode with a wakeup-timer set to one minute before the next scheduled recording starts.
Hell, even while recording or playing back you could power down the disc much of the time if you've got a reasonable ram-buffer. Typical PVR-boxes record at a quality of on the order of 1GB/hour, which means that a single gigabyte of buffer would enable it to power up only once an hour on playback.
mp3-players with spinning discs have been doing this for a decade, because the consumer actually -cares- about energy-consumption on battery-powered devices. (he cares about how long the battery holds), a old-generation ipod, for example, will read several songs into a ram-buffer, then power down the disc for something like 10-15 minutes before the buffer runs low. No reason PVR-boxes couldn't do the same.
That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.
But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.
If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a female 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.
That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.
But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.
If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a male 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.
Indeed. Quantitative differences do add up to qualitative differences. On the flipside, googles streetview doesn't disproportionally focus on "interesting" subjects like photographers do, thus despite being "public" most of the things photographed in streetview are still quite anonymous.
The most creepy databases by far these days, must be those of mobile-phone-companies. The level of detail they capture 24x7x365 about literally 95% of the population above age 12, is *staggering*, and they've got demographic data on most of those subscribers too.
A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.
They need to know what base-station your phone is near right now, for the technic to work. But why they are allowed to, or indeed in some cases *required* to keep this data for months or years, is beyond me.
"in the bushes" isn't really a very specific position, though I agree that it's pretty dumb to post anything like that. Infact it's pretty dumb to post anything at ALL in a situation like this.
Maybe many women do want to play games, just not the existing types?
Maybe. But do you seriously suggest that nobody, among the thousands of companies producing games, have come up with this unique insight ?
Companies will make whatever type of games they believe are likely to be profitable. If few or no companies are making a certain type of game, it's cos few or no companies believe it'd be profitable to do so. In other words, they don't share your belief that women want to play those games. (atleast not enough to be willing to -pay- for it sufficiently that producing the game would be profitable.
Now, it's possible you're right, and the entire game-industry is wrong.
Possible, but not likely.
Same is true for the fashion-industry, but in reverse.
Slashdot Mirror
But situation 2 is -always- a question of allocation of resources. Because we sure as hell do *NOT* live in a world where every conceivable useful job is already being performed, so there's nothing to do except relax in luxury for the remaining 18.
And if we *did* live in that world, would it really be so bad ? Is work a goal in itself, or is it just a necessary evil in order to produce the necessary goods and services ?
I don't know how familiar you are with the "Nordic model" in politics ? It's a mix-and-match model like I think all functionining models. Pure ideologies (be it Rand or Marx) sound attractive and simple on paper, but break down in reality.
We've got property rights. We've got capitalism. We've got free markets. But property-rights are not unlimited. Capitalism is not unfettered. And the markets have limits.
Wikipedia explains the concept well:
The Nordic model refers to the economic and social models of the Nordic countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland). This particular adaptation of the mixed market economy is characterised by more generous welfare states (relative to other developed countries), which are aimed specifically at enhancing individual autonomy, ensuring the universal provision of basic human rights and stabilizing the economy. It is distinguished from other welfare states with similar goals by its emphasis on maximising labour force participation, promoting gender equality, egalitarian and extensive benefit levels, large magnitude of redistribution, and liberal use of expansionary fiscal policy.
A large part of the reason we're wealthy despite the generous welfare is precisely this: the welfare is specifically targeted at increasing individual autonomy and increasing workforce participation. As a consequence we have, for example, much higher female workforce-participation than most other countries.
So yes, we've got high taxes. But much of them is used to buy me freedom. For example, knowing that the health of me and my family is taken care of, regardless of what kind of choices I make about employment, significantly adds to freedom. As does policies that make it possible (but not mandatory) to combine careers with children, for example.
Practically ? My wife and I gross about $20K/month - and yes we pay high taxes on it, about 30% thus we take-home "only" about $14K/month - but that doesn't seem like such a bad deal at *all* when you consider that for our taxes we got more than a full year of paid parental leave on each of the 2 occasions when we got kids - and that the state is now sponsoring high-quality childcare-facilities for the same kids to the tune of $1500/kid/month. And for example saving for college is a no-issue here since those are cost-free.
Thing is, it's a lot -cheaper- to own a computer than to rent one, especially since there's a huge surplus of second-hand computers.
If you cannot afford even that, you're better off doing without a computer at all until you've saved up enough. (save the money you'd otherwise pay to rent a computer!)
This is an interesting discussion, and you're right. The problem with the "let everyone work shorter hours then" idea is that the tendency is for new ways of production to require a lower count of people -- but also more educated specialists.
That is, while previously you needed 50 guys who could use a shovel, you thereafter need one guy who's an ace machine-operator for a ditch. For building a door you no longer need a dozen guys who can use a manual saw, you need one guy who can program the CNC efficiently. And since education ain't free it's a much more expensive solution to have 4 guys work 2 hours each, instead of one guy work full days.
My opinion is that capitalism, and letting the owners benefit, is the best system we've found for creating wealth, and for optimising production. (the same thing really!)
But it sucks at distributing that wealth, and we need mechanisms for that.
I'm thus one of those rare creatures who's a fairly high earner, yet support higher tax-rates and fairly generous benefits to everyone. (household-income around $225K/year puts us at upper-middle here in Norway)
I don't see freeloaders as such a problem. Who cares if lots of people freeload as long as the benefits to working hard are sufficient to motivate a sufficient number of qualified people to produce all the products and services needed ?
As it turns out, we *are* trying to reduce freeloading in Norway currently, but that's motivated primarily by the fact that we're lacking workers. That's right, there's substantially more unfilled positions than there are unemployed people seeking jobs. Under *those* circumstances it makes sense to try to increase the rewards for working. (for example, retired people may now, without limitation, work and earn money, with -no- reduction in their pensions, which wasn't previously the case)
Allthough in many jurisdictions you'll get reasonable legal costs reimbursed if you're deemed not guilty.
Agreed. For normal people, housing is a *cost*. You need adequate housing, and if that's available for less, it's a good thing for those who need to buy it.
Lower prices on housing, is essentially only a bad thing for those people who lent out money with houses as security - those people now have less security than they used to have, i.e. they might not get their money back.
But whenever you lend out money, there's -always- a risk that the money ain't coming back. This risk is the reason you demand a interest that is higher than the one you can get in the bank. Essentially, I might say: I can get 3% interest in the bank, but if you pay me 5% I'll let you borrow the money instead, the extra 2% is there because of the higher risk that you'll default.
The real problem is "too big to fail" and insufficient capitalisation-demands. When you make a game where the rules for gambling are that wins can be kept (without limitation) whereas losses beyond a certain (low) level is absorbed by others, it's not odd that people choose to gamble.
Does it pay to take a bet that has 25% chance of earning a million, and 75% chance of losing a million ? Not normally no, it's a bad deal. But if I can start a company, using $20K of my own money as equity, and then have the company take that gamble, then I'm in the black:
I now have a 25% chance of gaining a million, and a 75% chance of losing not a million, but merely the $20K that is my equity. (the company goes bankrupt, the rest of the loss is absorbed by its creditors)
Good start ! But carry the analysis further !
What is work for ?
First, to produce the goods and services we need for a (preferably) comfortable life. If we want to eat bread - that bread has to be produced somehow. In sum total, humanity by mathemathical nessecity must produce the same amount of goods and services that we consume.
For this first purpose, it doesn't matter if the bread for a town is baked by 20 people, or by 2 people tending an advanced bread-making-machine.
But work has a second effect: It gives everyone something to sell (his work-hours) and thus acts as a mechanism for distributing wealth. There is no problem with the bread-making-machine for production itself, but if the 18 previous-bakers are now unemployed and unable to secure sufficient income then *that* is a problem.
This is a distribution-problem, and not a production-problem.
It depends. Signaling poverty will drive down prices. So if houses are poorly maintained and have yards full of junk, for example, prices will be lower.
But a well-maintained but "peculiar" house ? No, that'd not make me skeptical in the least. If anything, I'd probably consider it a likely home of creative types of people, but people who care about maintaining their property well, and I don't see what should be problematic about that.
But most HOAs are opposite: you'll probably get away with waiting 5 years too long with repainting the thing, but you'll probably -not- get away with painting the house purple.
And yeah, I've purchased a house. Twice in the last 5 years, even.
It's very odd. There's no HOAs here in Norway, atleast if they exist, they must be uncommon seeing as I've never come into contact with one.
But even in the absence of one, it's not as if one can do ANYTHING. You're still restricted both by law, and by municipal regulation.
Yeah, those are wide freedoms. But why not ? Ain't USA supposed to be land of the free ? Yes this means I can paint my house purple if I damn well please, but guess what, it's -MY- house. Your property-value sank (a tiny fraction of what mine did) ? Tough luck !
Yeah, but it may well be later rather than sooner. There's glazed clay-tiles on my house which is built in 1980, which is 30 years ago, and they're holding up fine, I'd not be surprised if the roofing is okay for another few decades.
Not really. Soldiers and/or armed guards are most commonly used as deterrent. That is, their purpose is to discourage other people from getting the idea that one might get away with certain behaviour.
The hosting-facility most definitely do NOT want shooting to occur, inside or ourside the facility. The guards are thus there not for the purpose of shooting. They are there for discouraging creative entrepeneurs from getting certain classes of ideas.
I'm not saying it's not reasonable to feel uncomfortable about people using assault-rifles to assure you're not doing anything you shouldn't. But that's the point: to discourage you from dumb ideas. If the rifle is ever fired, that's a failure, not a success. (either it didn't discourage as intended, or else, it was fired in error, both would be bad)
Any statement that starts with "Europe handles this through ..." is misleading. Thing is, Europe consists of a multitude of very different countries inside and outside the European Union.
Any analysis that dumps Sweden, Italy, Greece and Norway in the same basket, is going to be pointless since the countries have essentially nothing in common, except geographical region.
In short; "not even wrong"
At first, yes. The effect is well-understood and well-researched, try asking google or wikipedia about "demographic transition".
Primitive societies, have high birth-rates, but also high death-rates, then living-conditions improve, and death-rates fall, but birth-rates remain, leading to population-growth. In the next-phase births fall too though, and so the new steady state is low-deaths AND low births.
Many wealthy nations today have birth-rates *below* the replacement-level, this is true for large parts of Europe, for example.
Who the fuck came up with the ida that bible stories "are intended for presentation to children" ?
The bible is most definitely *not* written to be child-friendly, it has plenty of gruesome murders and torture, and a fair bit of sex.
Is that even a question ? Offcourse you do. I deleted my facebook-profile more than a year ago.
If someone doesn't want to know me, because I don't use Facebook, then it's my opinion that I'm better off without them, I don't need "friends" of that quality.
One is the raw-amount, simply the number of sensors multiplied with the frequency each sample at multiplied with the size of each sample.
But the article itself say they filter and store only the interesting stuff, which is, as we can see from the later numbers, a triflingly small fraction of the entirety.
A camera that can do full-HD at 30fps captures 186MB/s afterall, but it does not follow that a facility with 3 such security-cameras need to store however many petabytes that becomes, in order to have a recording of the burglars.
Indeed. The entire thing isn't merely out of proportion, it is WILDLY out of proportion.
Diabetes contributes to a quarter million deaths in USA every year. (and is the -direct- cause of around 70.000 deaths).
Reducing diabetes by 1% would save more lives than eliminating terrorism completely.
Where's the multi-trillion-dollar "war on diabetes" ?
Consumer knowledge and choice is needed, agreed. If the consumer both know about the differences, and are given a real choice, then sometimes, the better option wins out.
Electrical applicances have an energy-rating here, from A to F, where C represents average energy-consumption. Offcourse it *is* somewhat more expensive to make a refrigirator say, better insulated to earn an A. But in this case consumers have a choice and are informed. The end-result is that 95% of the sold appliances are grade A.
Indeed. Given a choice between a $299 box that eats electricity for $100 a year, and a $339 box that has the same functionality, but consumes only half the electricity, most users will go for the first.
It's partly that users are dumb, and partly that the information needed isn't easily available. The situation would improve to *some* degree if typical energy-consumption pro year was required info on the price-tag.
It needs to run while recording, sure. But these typically don't do this 24x7x365.
When they don't, they could spin down the hard-disc, and for that matter go into sleep-mode with a wakeup-timer set to one minute before the next scheduled recording starts.
Hell, even while recording or playing back you could power down the disc much of the time if you've got a reasonable ram-buffer. Typical PVR-boxes record at a quality of on the order of 1GB/hour, which means that a single gigabyte of buffer would enable it to power up only once an hour on playback.
mp3-players with spinning discs have been doing this for a decade, because the consumer actually -cares- about energy-consumption on battery-powered devices. (he cares about how long the battery holds), a old-generation ipod, for example, will read several songs into a ram-buffer, then power down the disc for something like 10-15 minutes before the buffer runs low. No reason PVR-boxes couldn't do the same.
True enough. Simple physics.
When it's warmer, the same volume of air, can hold more water-vapour, AND more water evaporates from warmer seas.
But when more water goes up, more water must also come down, it's not as if it -accumulates- up there. Thus we'll get heavier rainfall.
Best-case, some of that rainfall comes in areas that need it, and where it causes more good than harm.
But unavoidably, some of it will come down at inconvenient times and or inconvenient places.
That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.
But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.
If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a female 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.
That's true for some subset of the population. SMS is being used less than it was at the peak, because Facebook and Twitter and suchlike has taken over parts of that.
But locationdata, phones and SMS is still very poweful. Notice that typically not only the cell you're in, but your signal-strength to all towers in range, are logged, which gives positioning that's more accurate than just which cell you're in.
If you know the customer is a male 17 year old, and he spends a lot of time with a male 16 year old school with a home-address that indicates she attends the same school he does, and they spend the night in the same location regularily, it's not a guarantee, but you're gonna be right most of the time if you tentatively assume they're a couple, for example.
Indeed. Quantitative differences do add up to qualitative differences. On the flipside, googles streetview doesn't disproportionally focus on "interesting" subjects like photographers do, thus despite being "public" most of the things photographed in streetview are still quite anonymous.
The most creepy databases by far these days, must be those of mobile-phone-companies. The level of detail they capture 24x7x365 about literally 95% of the population above age 12, is *staggering*, and they've got demographic data on most of those subscribers too.
A close-to-complete social map, for example, should be fairly doable to construct, just from observing who calls eachothers or send SMS to eachothers, you can even assign fairly accurate weights to the relationships based on frequency of call/sms and frequency and duration of being in the same spots.
They need to know what base-station your phone is near right now, for the technic to work. But why they are allowed to, or indeed in some cases *required* to keep this data for months or years, is beyond me.
"in the bushes" isn't really a very specific position, though I agree that it's pretty dumb to post anything like that. Infact it's pretty dumb to post anything at ALL in a situation like this.
Maybe many women do want to play games, just not the existing types?
Maybe. But do you seriously suggest that nobody, among the thousands of companies producing games, have come up with this unique insight ?
Companies will make whatever type of games they believe are likely to be profitable. If few or no companies are making a certain type of game, it's cos few or no companies believe it'd be profitable to do so. In other words, they don't share your belief that women want to play those games. (atleast not enough to be willing to -pay- for it sufficiently that producing the game would be profitable.
Now, it's possible you're right, and the entire game-industry is wrong.
Possible, but not likely.
Same is true for the fashion-industry, but in reverse.