Well you can cite logic all you want, but when I go to the farmer's market, I pay significantly less for many items. Grocery stores have low margins: true. But not on everything. They know that if they can pull you in w/ bargains on big-name items, they can charge a lot for veggies. And they do.
Sure, you can also find expensive things at the farmer's market. In general though, I've noticed that farmers practically give veggies that are in season.
No, you misunderstand how bonds work. If there are no profits, the bondholders lose. Once the money is borrowed, and collateralized by the profits, it's no longer the responsibility of the tax payers.
Of course some will just see you kissing ass and write you off.
Yeah, much better to be aloof and not to care about your job. When someone is working for me, I hate it when they act pleasant, or try to do their jobs better. Bunch of political ass-kissers. I prefer the 'cool' guys who are quiet except when they are complaining about the impossibility of doing their job. Those guys really keep it real.
Re:Heroin? What Kinda Book Reading Do You Do, JR?
on
Space Vulture
·
· Score: 1
Your final nit might have been mispicked.
When the OP wrote 'I reread these', it's possible he was not talking about the specific review that he had just submitted, he was talking about his general habit of reading his reviews before he submits them. Read his sentence again and change the pronunciation of 'reread' and you'll see what I mean.
"Yup, which is exactly what community software should be doing. It makes no commercial sense to localise..."
I think this is really at the heart of the 'next' business model. The world is changing, the recent economic events are lighting a fire under everyone's collective butt. The idea of the 'Long Tail' is not just for media, it applies to any other business-model where a community or small company provides a highly focused service for an area that isn't practical for a large company. I think collectively there's more business there than there is for large companies.
Pardon the tangent (very far off from Iceland), but have you seen a tv show called 'Prototype This'? A group of engineers create fantastic inventions to solve some problem. One recurrent motif: they go to some very small shop to get a type of tech that is made by 1-5 other specialist geeks. I see the future! It tells me that the way to survive and maybe even get ahead in the future is to get really good at what you do, to network religiously, and to stop worrying about the traditional values of big companies (attendance, years of service, office-politics)
You're mixing up your arguments. First you're noting that corn goes bad if not used in a specified time frame, then you're noting that when a business stops using software, it is no longer useful...do you see how you are reinforcing the exact opposite point that you are trying to make?
If I hire someone to clean my house, and then an earthquake wrecks my house, do I no longer owe anything, since housecleaning isn't a tangible good?
If you pay for something on an installation basis, you have to keep paying even when you stop using the thing you bought. That's a fundamental concept of economics.
I think it would be good business and good public relations for MS to work something out that helps out the MCPs. Something that would increase the incentive to be an MCP. But to call them underhanded is a little wrong-headed.
So...anything related to music, games, entertainment of any other kind...anything related to the non-work world, that's of no interest to you?
Ok, I kind of get your real point: that we spend most of our days in cubes, so we should be more interested in stuff that makes that part of our life better. But what if we take a look at the fundamental assumption that work should be done from cubes? New interfaces, smarter setups that allow you to focus on the 10% of your job at which you really matter or excel, and have more leisure time. I would love to spend my day enjoying the outdoors, and being called on for my expertise 'on-demand'.
1Imagine that you were in a meeting discussing your business/app/whatever, and you have several apps running in your wearable interface that are recording/transcribing/annotating/etc the conversation. You don't take notes by hand, you have a computer doing it for you, and when you make a gesture, the computer knows to do some contextual research for you, and to include links in the notes it's produced for you. When you make another gesture, it means add it to your to-do list.
Just a few thoughts, I gotta go, the pizza is here.
The original post was about launch costs. The OP made an analogy, the next guy made a valid point that the numbers were inflated. Making sweeping assertions about what could happen economically is kind of pointless, because the impact to the world would be at least as unknowable as the weather 10 years from today.
Following your logic: before anyone had a chance to get to the gold, the price would already drop by a lot (speculative selling), and the price of substitutes would rise (other precious metals). The value of companies which use gold as a precursor could rise, and ultimately the competition for actually procuring the gold could lead to drastically lower launch costs.
Also, a new form of energy production begins: heat exchangers on the edge of the shadow of this enormous opaque ring around the planet.
The squirrel analogy is great, and no matter your personal philosophy or politics I think we can all agree on tumor-free nuts.
The only problem with the analogy is that it doesn't apply to the issue of eagles flying into turbines. You can't reasonably say that the reason it's bad that the eagles get whacked is that it's possible it could happen to you. If you want to stretch the definition of reasonable a little you could say that it will change migratory patterns, causing their traditional prey to overpopulate certain areas, leading to...whatever. I guess the message then is: before we invest ourselves completely in any idea let's try it on a smaller scale and get enough data to have an idea of the broader repercussions?
If that's the point, I agree. I think we should be investing in a very diverse portfolio of energy sources. In hindsight from the future some of those investments will look like wastes of time, but the alternative could be humanity fail, which I don't want (I guess I'm picky).
First of all, it's not treasonous to employ people from another country. That's just silly. Most of the countries in the world are not our enemies, particularly the ones where we do business. We have this thing called a trade embargo, you might have heard of it. We've been using it against Cuba for longer than I've been alive. No company that I know of has advocated that their employees move to Cuba, FYI.
Secondly, the reason this is an expensive place to live and work is not because we are a democracy, or because of cruft. It has more to do with our past success and the nature of currency. If we produce goods that everyone wants, it increases the value of our currency. This means that we can afford more goods and services from other countries. Do you only buy American? If not, your rant is completely hypocritical. If a company chooses to hire someone outside the country, they are being more efficient. The inefficiency doesn't come from something that Americans have done wrong, it comes from what we've done RIGHT. Do you suggest that in California we should refuse to hire people from Louisiana because they are (statistically) poorer, and will work for cheap? Somehow our economy has survived the porous intrastate border, how do you explain that in your view of the world?
You ask (paraphrasing) "why should [the companies] be able to make a profit"? The real question is why you think they shouldn't? Do you really believe it should be against the law to buy from someone outside of your town/city/state/country? I think that's the kind of provincialism that leads to cruft and corruption. I think your nationalistic fear and hate-mongering of other countries is just short-sighted.
We net benefit when companies run themselves as efficiently as possible. Protectionism is just a way to protect bad companies by passing on their expenses to everyone else in the country.
Honestly though, have you ever used your money to avoid mosquitoes?
I believe his statement was accurate. He wasn't saying that rich people can't use their money/power to get out of the room, or to protect themselves otherwise, but that it isn't right that easily preventable problems only exist for some parts of the population.
There is a reason for governments, and that reason is not just to serve the needs of the rich. It is a basic tenet of our government (for example) that all men are created equal, and shall equal rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Therefore when anything infringes on those basic rights, the government must step in.
That doesn't mean that the government must make everyone happy or rich. It doesn't mean that rich people can't buy themselves greater protection, but it does mean that if a basic human need isn't met, that the government steps in.
But we're talking about other countries. I believe that it is morally correct to help, but that's an insufficient reason, as they aren't covered by our founding docs. Here's my reasoning for them: I believe that working with other countries to establish a basic level of the human condition is more than just a worthy cause, it should be right up there with "we don't negotiate with terrorists" as a fundamental strategy. It's impossible (and not necessarily desirable) to try to maintain a world where everyone is born with exactly the same set of opportunities. But if the disparity is so great that basic survival is an issue for some, we lose our ability to claim any sort of right or order. If me and my family were literally being attacked by nature, and chances of survival were slim, I would feel that I had the right to do whatever necessary to make my child live: lie, cheat, steal, and kill. If someone has no other options, they can't be labeled one of the "bad guys", particularly if any one of us (with balls) would do the same in their situation.
I acknowledge up front that the line between 'basic human need' and 'popular human want' is pretty blurry, and changes over time. But as a species, I think we've come far enough to say something along the lines of 'person born into this world should have a x% chance of dying of a cheaply and easily preventable malady', and I think x should be revised as we become more capable. Infant mortality is in the double-digits in Afghanistan and many African countries, that's not cool.
So if Fannie Mae had NOT been able to buy the conforming loans, banks making stupid loans would have had less money available to them because they'd have to hold the conforming loans, and as a result, those banks would have made fewer stupid loans. Sounds to me like FM was part of the problem. Honestly, I'm pissed....
No, that's not right. Banks in general are not required to hold the conforming loans. Only the agencies have that mandate. You're saying that somehow the fact that FNMA made lots of good loans means that other banks were somehow forced to make bad ones? I'd like to understand how you got from A to B; it sounds to me like you're just ranting without really knowing what you're talking about.
Of course it isn't verifiable, but I thought this was interesting:
H1B#36a: "What wasn't reported was that the contractor was fired for writing a script poorly, that caused the failover over of a number of High-Availablitity production servers. His "landmine/timebomb" script was found through his same poor scripting skills. Whatever doping manager that hired that guy should be fired too, along with his director and VP!"
Having a larger number of people with a bachelor's degree does not make it worth less. Having a large number of people who don't know anything have a bachelor's degree makes it worth less.
I don't think this is what you were thinking about when you wrote that, but economically speaking, it is worth less if more people have one....
-l
I disagree that this is necessarily true. The number of graduates from a single school is too small to dilute the job market. On the other hand, if you have more fellow alums from the same school, you have more opportunities. Assuming that schools teach some things differently and sometimes use different jargon, it is in your advantage to have more people come from your school, it contributes to the success of your common 'school of thought'.
I think some professors might take issue with the statement that they don't care if 50% of students stop showing up. The article quotes professors who were upset at that very fact.
I agree with most of what you said, though. I had experimental lab-based calculus classes in my first year of college, and it really wasn't good. I definitely showed up for all of the labs, but I got much less out of them. When I get a set of instructions, I execute them as quickly and efficiently as possible. The labs didn't require enough thinking to really teach me very much.
RTFA! Why would you extrapolate to a future "where students do not need to be physical (sic) present on the campus"?
The point is that they're moving away from large impersonal lectures to more interactive group sessions. The result has been a higher percentage of attendance. That's kind of the opposite of what you said, isn't it?
That seems a bit silly. Java already has a 64-bit integer data type called a long, which works just fine. If a language changed the definition of an int every x years, it would break everything. All the existing code would have to be re-written, sometimes in non-obvious ways. The same applies to floats/doubles.
So the music industry is trying to sell a blanket license, so that it can monetize its assets without suing customers. Isn't this a step in the right direction? Calling it a tax instead of a blanket license is just inflammatory, IMHO. Some of these companies were built in good faith, relying on property rights as they currently exist, they paid money to own licenses which gave them the right to make profits. That doesn't guarantee profits, of course, but if they paid someone to 'own' the music, what's ethically wrong with pursuing those profits?
Don't get me wrong, I disagree with many of the fundamental ideas on which the industry relies. I think it's bad business to sue their customers, but the original mistake that they made was failing to keep up. They've invested so much in their current business infrastructure that they can't bear to part with the concept of owning songs in the traditional way.
Just had a thought: It must be difficult to program the artificial limb to respond to the correct signals. If you told me to flex a specific muscle, I'd actually have a pretty hard time isolating it and doing it. If I no longer had the muscle in question, it would be even harder. It makes me wonder, is that really how the nervous system works? Maybe we don't have a 'wire' from the brain to each muscle, we instead have a set of motions that we perform, each involving several muscles. Our brains can decide between those sets, and can use combinations of the sets to 'tweak' the movement. If the brain finds that a motion is impossible given the current set, it can work on evolving a new set, but that process would only be possible with a fairly involved training process, a reroute of the neural pathways.
What if you told people to go through a set of motions that involved other muscles as well, and used the intersections of the signals and muscles involved to isolate the correct signals? Maybe the story in the past couple days about replicating the Mona Lisa using polygons is a good analogy. The goal is to find a minimal set of signals (polygons) that form a basis for complete functionality.
Slashdot Mirror
Well you can cite logic all you want, but when I go to the farmer's market, I pay significantly less for many items. Grocery stores have low margins: true. But not on everything. They know that if they can pull you in w/ bargains on big-name items, they can charge a lot for veggies. And they do.
Sure, you can also find expensive things at the farmer's market. In general though, I've noticed that farmers practically give veggies that are in season.
-t.
No, you misunderstand how bonds work. If there are no profits, the bondholders lose. Once the money is borrowed, and collateralized by the profits, it's no longer the responsibility of the tax payers.
-t.
Of course some will just see you kissing ass and write you off.
Yeah, much better to be aloof and not to care about your job. When someone is working for me, I hate it when they act pleasant, or try to do their jobs better. Bunch of political ass-kissers. I prefer the 'cool' guys who are quiet except when they are complaining about the impossibility of doing their job. Those guys really keep it real.
-t.
I would say something about 'woosh!', but the OP ruined his own joke anyway.
Tom Cruise? Is that you?
-t.
Your final nit might have been mispicked.
When the OP wrote 'I reread these', it's possible he was not talking about the specific review that he had just submitted, he was talking about his general habit of reading his reviews before he submits them. Read his sentence again and change the pronunciation of 'reread' and you'll see what I mean.
-t.
This wouldn't be necessary if there were an 'ignore this post' tag for this purpose.
And the 'ignore this post' tag wouldn't be necessary if it were possible to undo mods.
-t.
"Yup, which is exactly what community software should be doing. It makes no commercial sense to localise..."
I think this is really at the heart of the 'next' business model. The world is changing, the recent economic events are lighting a fire under everyone's collective butt. The idea of the 'Long Tail' is not just for media, it applies to any other business-model where a community or small company provides a highly focused service for an area that isn't practical for a large company. I think collectively there's more business there than there is for large companies.
Pardon the tangent (very far off from Iceland), but have you seen a tv show called 'Prototype This'? A group of engineers create fantastic inventions to solve some problem. One recurrent motif: they go to some very small shop to get a type of tech that is made by 1-5 other specialist geeks. I see the future! It tells me that the way to survive and maybe even get ahead in the future is to get really good at what you do, to network religiously, and to stop worrying about the traditional values of big companies (attendance, years of service, office-politics)
Errmm...back to Iceland?
-t.
You're mixing up your arguments. First you're noting that corn goes bad if not used in a specified time frame, then you're noting that when a business stops using software, it is no longer useful...do you see how you are reinforcing the exact opposite point that you are trying to make?
If I hire someone to clean my house, and then an earthquake wrecks my house, do I no longer owe anything, since housecleaning isn't a tangible good?
If you pay for something on an installation basis, you have to keep paying even when you stop using the thing you bought. That's a fundamental concept of economics.
I think it would be good business and good public relations for MS to work something out that helps out the MCPs. Something that would increase the incentive to be an MCP. But to call them underhanded is a little wrong-headed.
-t.
So...anything related to music, games, entertainment of any other kind...anything related to the non-work world, that's of no interest to you?
Ok, I kind of get your real point: that we spend most of our days in cubes, so we should be more interested in stuff that makes that part of our life better. But what if we take a look at the fundamental assumption that work should be done from cubes? New interfaces, smarter setups that allow you to focus on the 10% of your job at which you really matter or excel, and have more leisure time. I would love to spend my day enjoying the outdoors, and being called on for my expertise 'on-demand'.
1Imagine that you were in a meeting discussing your business/app/whatever, and you have several apps running in your wearable interface that are recording/transcribing/annotating/etc the conversation. You don't take notes by hand, you have a computer doing it for you, and when you make a gesture, the computer knows to do some contextual research for you, and to include links in the notes it's produced for you. When you make another gesture, it means add it to your to-do list.
Just a few thoughts, I gotta go, the pizza is here.
-t.
The original post was about launch costs. The OP made an analogy, the next guy made a valid point that the numbers were inflated. Making sweeping assertions about what could happen economically is kind of pointless, because the impact to the world would be at least as unknowable as the weather 10 years from today.
Following your logic: before anyone had a chance to get to the gold, the price would already drop by a lot (speculative selling), and the price of substitutes would rise (other precious metals). The value of companies which use gold as a precursor could rise, and ultimately the competition for actually procuring the gold could lead to drastically lower launch costs.
Also, a new form of energy production begins: heat exchangers on the edge of the shadow of this enormous opaque ring around the planet.
-t.
The squirrel analogy is great, and no matter your personal philosophy or politics I think we can all agree on tumor-free nuts.
The only problem with the analogy is that it doesn't apply to the issue of eagles flying into turbines. You can't reasonably say that the reason it's bad that the eagles get whacked is that it's possible it could happen to you. If you want to stretch the definition of reasonable a little you could say that it will change migratory patterns, causing their traditional prey to overpopulate certain areas, leading to...whatever. I guess the message then is: before we invest ourselves completely in any idea let's try it on a smaller scale and get enough data to have an idea of the broader repercussions?
If that's the point, I agree. I think we should be investing in a very diverse portfolio of energy sources. In hindsight from the future some of those investments will look like wastes of time, but the alternative could be humanity fail, which I don't want (I guess I'm picky).
-t.
See this previous story regarding the initial request for funds.
-t.
First of all, it's not treasonous to employ people from another country. That's just silly. Most of the countries in the world are not our enemies, particularly the ones where we do business. We have this thing called a trade embargo, you might have heard of it. We've been using it against Cuba for longer than I've been alive. No company that I know of has advocated that their employees move to Cuba, FYI.
Secondly, the reason this is an expensive place to live and work is not because we are a democracy, or because of cruft. It has more to do with our past success and the nature of currency. If we produce goods that everyone wants, it increases the value of our currency. This means that we can afford more goods and services from other countries. Do you only buy American? If not, your rant is completely hypocritical. If a company chooses to hire someone outside the country, they are being more efficient. The inefficiency doesn't come from something that Americans have done wrong, it comes from what we've done RIGHT. Do you suggest that in California we should refuse to hire people from Louisiana because they are (statistically) poorer, and will work for cheap? Somehow our economy has survived the porous intrastate border, how do you explain that in your view of the world?
You ask (paraphrasing) "why should [the companies] be able to make a profit"? The real question is why you think they shouldn't? Do you really believe it should be against the law to buy from someone outside of your town/city/state/country? I think that's the kind of provincialism that leads to cruft and corruption. I think your nationalistic fear and hate-mongering of other countries is just short-sighted.
We net benefit when companies run themselves as efficiently as possible. Protectionism is just a way to protect bad companies by passing on their expenses to everyone else in the country.
-t.
I guess that's one way to think of it...
Honestly though, have you ever used your money to avoid mosquitoes?
I believe his statement was accurate. He wasn't saying that rich people can't use their money/power to get out of the room, or to protect themselves otherwise, but that it isn't right that easily preventable problems only exist for some parts of the population.
There is a reason for governments, and that reason is not just to serve the needs of the rich. It is a basic tenet of our government (for example) that all men are created equal, and shall equal rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Therefore when anything infringes on those basic rights, the government must step in.
That doesn't mean that the government must make everyone happy or rich. It doesn't mean that rich people can't buy themselves greater protection, but it does mean that if a basic human need isn't met, that the government steps in.
But we're talking about other countries. I believe that it is morally correct to help, but that's an insufficient reason, as they aren't covered by our founding docs. Here's my reasoning for them: I believe that working with other countries to establish a basic level of the human condition is more than just a worthy cause, it should be right up there with "we don't negotiate with terrorists" as a fundamental strategy. It's impossible (and not necessarily desirable) to try to maintain a world where everyone is born with exactly the same set of opportunities. But if the disparity is so great that basic survival is an issue for some, we lose our ability to claim any sort of right or order. If me and my family were literally being attacked by nature, and chances of survival were slim, I would feel that I had the right to do whatever necessary to make my child live: lie, cheat, steal, and kill. If someone has no other options, they can't be labeled one of the "bad guys", particularly if any one of us (with balls) would do the same in their situation.
I acknowledge up front that the line between 'basic human need' and 'popular human want' is pretty blurry, and changes over time. But as a species, I think we've come far enough to say something along the lines of 'person born into this world should have a x% chance of dying of a cheaply and easily preventable malady', and I think x should be revised as we become more capable. Infant mortality is in the double-digits in Afghanistan and many African countries, that's not cool.
-t.
So if Fannie Mae had NOT been able to buy the conforming loans, banks making stupid loans would have had less money available to them because they'd have to hold the conforming loans, and as a result, those banks would have made fewer stupid loans. Sounds to me like FM was part of the problem. Honestly, I'm pissed. ...
No, that's not right. Banks in general are not required to hold the conforming loans. Only the agencies have that mandate. You're saying that somehow the fact that FNMA made lots of good loans means that other banks were somehow forced to make bad ones? I'd like to understand how you got from A to B; it sounds to me like you're just ranting without really knowing what you're talking about.
-t.
Of course it isn't verifiable, but I thought this was interesting:
H1B#36a: "What wasn't reported was that the contractor was fired for writing a script poorly, that caused the failover over of a number of High-Availablitity production servers. His "landmine/timebomb" script was found through his same poor scripting skills. Whatever doping manager that hired that guy should be fired too, along with his director and VP!"
-t.
Well said. Mod parent up!
Don't forget:
-Doing the matrix exponentiation by diagonalizing the matrix into eigenvalues is bad-ass!
-Simplifying trigonometric formulas using Euler's identity is awesome!
-Transforming a differential equation into a simple algebra problem using Laplace Transform's can BLOW YOUR FREAKING MIND!
-t.
Unless there's some reason to believe there will be a problem, this is not a rational insurance policy, IMHO.
-t.
Having a larger number of people with a bachelor's degree does not make it worth less. Having a large number of people who don't know anything have a bachelor's degree makes it worth less.
I don't think this is what you were thinking about when you wrote that, but economically speaking, it is worth less if more people have one. ...
-l
I disagree that this is necessarily true. The number of graduates from a single school is too small to dilute the job market. On the other hand, if you have more fellow alums from the same school, you have more opportunities. Assuming that schools teach some things differently and sometimes use different jargon, it is in your advantage to have more people come from your school, it contributes to the success of your common 'school of thought'.
I think some professors might take issue with the statement that they don't care if 50% of students stop showing up. The article quotes professors who were upset at that very fact.
I agree with most of what you said, though. I had experimental lab-based calculus classes in my first year of college, and it really wasn't good. I definitely showed up for all of the labs, but I got much less out of them. When I get a set of instructions, I execute them as quickly and efficiently as possible. The labs didn't require enough thinking to really teach me very much.
-t.
RTFA!
Why would you extrapolate to a future "where students do not need to be physical (sic) present on the campus"?
The point is that they're moving away from large impersonal lectures to more interactive group sessions. The result has been a higher percentage of attendance. That's kind of the opposite of what you said, isn't it?
Why are you modded Insightful?
-t.
That seems a bit silly. Java already has a 64-bit integer data type called a long, which works just fine. If a language changed the definition of an int every x years, it would break everything. All the existing code would have to be re-written, sometimes in non-obvious ways. The same applies to floats/doubles.
-t.
So the music industry is trying to sell a blanket license, so that it can monetize its assets without suing customers. Isn't this a step in the right direction? Calling it a tax instead of a blanket license is just inflammatory, IMHO. Some of these companies were built in good faith, relying on property rights as they currently exist, they paid money to own licenses which gave them the right to make profits. That doesn't guarantee profits, of course, but if they paid someone to 'own' the music, what's ethically wrong with pursuing those profits?
Don't get me wrong, I disagree with many of the fundamental ideas on which the industry relies. I think it's bad business to sue their customers, but the original mistake that they made was failing to keep up. They've invested so much in their current business infrastructure that they can't bear to part with the concept of owning songs in the traditional way.
Just had a thought: It must be difficult to program the artificial limb to respond to the correct signals. If you told me to flex a specific muscle, I'd actually have a pretty hard time isolating it and doing it. If I no longer had the muscle in question, it would be even harder. It makes me wonder, is that really how the nervous system works? Maybe we don't have a 'wire' from the brain to each muscle, we instead have a set of motions that we perform, each involving several muscles. Our brains can decide between those sets, and can use combinations of the sets to 'tweak' the movement. If the brain finds that a motion is impossible given the current set, it can work on evolving a new set, but that process would only be possible with a fairly involved training process, a reroute of the neural pathways.
What if you told people to go through a set of motions that involved other muscles as well, and used the intersections of the signals and muscles involved to isolate the correct signals? Maybe the story in the past couple days about replicating the Mona Lisa using polygons is a good analogy. The goal is to find a minimal set of signals (polygons) that form a basis for complete functionality.
-t.