And Facebook doesn't either. Not really. There is a guy posting as God on FB. According to reddit, he was banned for 3 days for posting an illustration of female reproductive organs and notes about what Sen. candidate Akin calls them. So obviously they are aware of the account, but haven't forced him to quit entirely.
The cost of bandwidth to be able to restore TB's of data in a reasonable amount of time is out of the reach of pretty much everyone but megacorps whereas an FC tape library comes in at under $15k.
True. I get spoiled since we have a 10Gbps connection; I don't have to consider bandwidth unless we are talking about going to our India facility.
You have a common sense view of "regulation equals safety equals good"
I would say my view is more nuanced: Some regulations equals a particular level of safety which may be good depending on the costs. I fully realize that a lot of regulations are bad and too costly - for example, the TSA.
You seem to have the view that any regulation equals cost equals bad. The problem with relying on the market in all cases is that 1) there is asymmetrical information (e.g. I don't know what chemicals they are using to frack, so I can't, as a market agent, correctly price natural gas) and 2) the market doesn't always price externalities correctly.
That wouldn't happen in the first place.
Sure it would. Companies and people will always take shortcuts to save costs. Look at Deepwater. The contractor used sub-standard practices in creating the cement casing. Now, BP has paid out billions in claims, but after the lawyers take their cut, I'm doubtful that the true cost of the oil spill will be recouped by those affected. It's virtually impossible to calculate the true cost to tourism, fishing, the environment, etc., so any settlement between BP and individuals or BP and the government will likely be incorrect. It makes more sense to insure (through regulations) that these types of events have a very small chance of happening.
One of the issues here is the is the different discount rates agents in the market have. A (public) corporation will tend to have a lower discount rate (i.e. preferring their money upfront), whereas an individual will tend to have a relatively higher discount rate (because they don't need to make their quarterly numbers). Because of this, a corporation may choose to save $100 today if the cost in a year is $120.
If there was a guy that lost his job and everyone on the block started donating food to him but you didn't want to, would you think it's acceptable for them to break into your house and take it by force?
What's the difference between that and from forcibly expelling me from their society, which is what would happen.
Do you have some numbers to back that up or is it your gut talking? I'm more inclined to believe our government military spending is due to us having bases and troops all over the world and starting wars every couple of years and pissing off half the world.
Of course our military spending is due to having bases and troops all over the world, and this is precisely why countries like the UK, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan can get away without spending as much on their militaries. Look at most NATO actions - who takes the largest role? Usually it's the US, while the rest of NATO (nearly) free-rides.
It would be hard to find a foreign politician who will say that they don't spend as much on defense because of the US's commitment to defend them, but it's an obvious conclusion when you compare military spending per GDP: US: 4.8% Taiwan: 2.7% S. Korea: 2.7% UK: 2.6% Germany: 1.4% Spain: 1.1% Japan: 1.0% Phillipines: 0.8%
The UK and Spain were targets of bombings on 7-7-07, so it's not like the US is the only target. Also, I would argue that you have cause and effect backwards. We are probably pissing everybody off because (in part) we are spending so much on defense.
No, you're wrong. He cleared security without a problem the first time.
I'm not surprised. The TSA couldn't find a scathing political statement if it was printed on the front of someone's shirt standing right in front of them.
I think that the current system is more akin to "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" when it should be "pay for what you use".
There are two problems with this. First, it is extremely difficult to measure how much someone uses. How much do you use a road (this is actually an easy one - per gallon gas tax, all toll roads [might be impractical for surface streets], per mile car registration fees, etc.)? How much do you benefit from the presence of a fire department (even if your house doesn't catch fire, you benefit when they put out the fire down the block)? What about police? How much do you benefit from FDA regulations which ensure certain standards of food/drug quality? How much CDC or NASA do you use?
Second, often times the people who use a lot (i.e. those on welfare, receiving food stamps, etc.) are those least able to pay. It doesn't make much sense (when talking about the social safety net part of government) to say you can only receive a government benefit if you can pay for it.
I am skeptical of most claimed tangible public goods. Just to make it clear, a public good is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. [lighthouse analogy]
So if Exxon wasn't contributing to the lighthouse fund, it would be best for the lighthouse to turn off it's light when the Exxon Valdez was trying to navigate the treacherous reef during a storm? What we're talking about here isn't so much public goods as externalities and the Tragedy of the Commons. In your analogy, the non-paying shipping company probably isn't bearing all the cost of not-paying for lighthouse coverage. Even if there isn't a damages cap, it's not always possible to put a monetary figure on the costs of pollution. What's the financial impact of the Deepwater spill? Chernobyl? Is it possible for a single entity to cause an incident which costs more than it's ability to pay?
But we're getting away from the question of taxation and how to pay for government. If we're talking about lighthouses, police/fire, roads, parks, CDC, FDA.... excludability costs money. It's more efficient (but perhaps not fairer in your view), to offer those benefits to everyone. It might cost X to have a lighthouse. It will cost X+Y to have a lighthouse with a mechanism to determine who's paid and who hasn't.
To me, the discussion shouldn't be "how do we handle the excludability," but rather "what services should the government be providing. Maybe it shouldn't be providing crop or flood insurance. Maybe it shouldn't be providing unemployment insurance. Maybe it shouldn't be providing fire services.
Sure, Texas isn't going to let you drop a nuke on Oklahoma but outside of that, if you want to drop paratroopers in OK, that'll be okay with Texas,
I'm not sure why you're using States in your analogy. The issue is if the individual would voluntarily contribute to fund the national defense. If everyone else is paying $100 per year to support our military, why should I pay anything? The proof of the free-rider effect is shown when you look at Canada's military spending versus ours. Canada (and Mexico, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc.) don't have to pay for defense because they know we will.
OK, fair point on the SLA. Sounds like you have a pretty good storage solution.... but....
Glacier is at least 3 copies, each in separate disaster zones (they claim something ridiculous like 9 9's availability). Your solution sounds like 1 copy in the same disaster zone as you (which matters if this is backup storage).
Loading the data from storage to your production environment I'm not sure what's more expensive, the connectivity to be able to pull your data from Glacier at a reasonable rate, or the tape drives and controllers to unload the tapes. If you're only doing a couple tapes at a time, probably the latter; if your dealing with scores or hundreds of tapes, probably the former. (Don't forget to include labor costs for managing that hardware.)
How is a computer supposed to predict where and what size I want my windows, when I cant do that?
Chances are, you use the same or similar layout when you are doing the same task. When you have a certain combination of windows open, you probably arrange them in a very similar way. The computer could learn this overtime.
Or failing that, it could simply allow you to save a configuration.
So in Win7, I either have to install 3rd party programs to manage the windows, or use the *Task Manager*?? You'd think Windows would do windows better.
Note: the Task Manager hack does not work on my machine with a dual monitor setup.
Can you enlighten us, because I would love to be able to tile my program windows the same way I tile my Excel windows.
When I saw the ads for 7 showcasing the feature where you drag the window to the side and it automatically resizes to fill exactly half of the screen I thought, "Awesome, that would actually be useful." Turns out it doesn't work so easily.
My menu isn't on a separate screen; I tap a vertical elipsis (three dots going up and down, : with an extra dot, whatever) and the menu pops up.
Does the menu take up the whole screen when it pops open? If so, I think that's the point. The Win7/XP start menu overlays a small portion of the desktop, so you maintain a cognitive connection with your work space while accessing the menu for whatever. I'm not sure I understand the benefit of this if you are opening a new program in full screen mode, but I guess the idea is that there is a difference in how our brain interprets the "work space" and the "start menu," so replacing a program in the work space is less cognitively challenging than replacing a program with a menu, then replacing that menu with a (new) program.
I have some 6k LTO3/4 tapes offsite, what would that cost in Glacier again?
Assuming 50/50 split and 100% utilization of the tape space (i.e. 600 GB per tape), then $36k per month. What do you spend to store those 6k tapes? It sounds like you're storing them offline (so no 5 hour SLA to first byte read), so your not exactly comparing apple to apples.
Also, I'm guessing you had to pay for those tapes. If we take an average cost of $30 per tape (you bought some when the generation was new I'm guessing), that's about $180k. Amortized over 3 years that an additional $5k per month.
But you're right, in the last quarter ending June 30 Apple outsold AT&T. In fact, over the last 4 quarters, Apples revenues were $148.8B versus $127.4B for AT&T
You have to pay $80 to get a tape back? That's a lot more expensive than Glacier. There you can retrieve up to 5% of your archive for free every month. After that it is $0.01/GB. Even if the 4 hour option is $40, that's still equivalent to the cost of retrieving 4TBs from Glacier (assuming you've already retrieved the 5%).
icebraining hit the nail on the head in the sibling post. You have put forth an argument for no taxation. And you know what, it's not completely without merit. On the other hand, I think you are confusing "taxes" with "contributions to society".
Go ahead and convinced yourself that society equals government and without taxing the poor we'd all be sitting in the mud banging rocks together instead of shooting to the moon and jacking off to Nature and Science magazines but that's utter bullshit.
There are some examples in history of societies which worked without an explicit taxation system (I'm thinking tribal societies like Native Americans; there may be other examples of more infrastructure-heavy societies that worked without any taxation, but I can't think of any. Do you have some examples?).
However, even in those tribal societies, there was an implicit taxation system. Everyone was obligated to participate and "give back" to the society. When you went out to hunt, you didn't keep all of the kill to yourself - you shared it with your family and tribe. This is a simplification of the social structure of thousands of different cultures, but the point is just because there isn't a bureaucracy forcing you to contribute at threat of physical detention doesn't mean that there isn't a cultural more forcing you to contribute at threat of banishment. By living in a modern society you are entering into an implicit agreement: you will benefit from the physical infrastructure, the police and fire protection, the national defense, the national parks, etc. In return, you agree to pay your taxes, and you agree to elect representatives who will shape tax and spending policies in ways you agree with.
A "good argument" for regressive tax system can only be subjective.
Ummm... no. Here's an example: A flat consumption tax would be regressive, because people with lower incomes spend a greater percentage of their income each year. The richer you are, the more you save (i.e. the less you consume, as a percentage of your income). One can make objective arguments for such a tax by making the case that it is easier to collect, will raise the same amount of revenue as an income tax, etc.
Here's what it boils down to. All human interactions should be voluntary. If I clear a field, sew the seeds and tend the crops, I should be own the fruits of my labor.
I don't necessarily disagree. However, what you're missing is that there are some goods and services that require society working together as a whole. It doesn't make sense for individuals to voluntarily contribute to, for example, national defense. People, by their nature, will free-ride. Even when the volunteer payment for a free service model looks like it works (see: public radio), a closer examination shows that it is subsidized by advertising and taxes.
Can you give some examples of public goods which succeed with an all volunteer funding model?
but you're worried that the people who had to watch it on TV might have been affected?
Yes. Watching graphic violence on video affects people. If it is a real event (as opposed to fiction), it will affect them even more. Watching such an event in real life is undoubtedly even more traumatic. You don't seriously believe that a normal person could watch a video of a man sodomizing a toddler, then slicing the kid open with a butcher knife and not be affected by it, do you?
A regressive tax system is so bad for so many obvious reasons that it is unnecessary to refute the argument. But I honestly couldn't tell if he was seriously putting it forward or simply being trollish.
If you think you have a good argument for a regressive tax system, I'm all ears.
I generally agree with what you're saying. The point I'm trying to make is that you can hold the executive management responsible for the actions of middle managers when they create incentives for those middle managers to prioritize, for example, bottom line profit of that manager's division above all else. This could incentivize the manager to cut corners and costs by dumping waste illegally, or by hiring contractors and not giving them proper psychological support.
Now, to your point, if a company has a more holistic incentive structure designed to reward middle managers who don't do these "bad" things, the bad things might still happen because people are flawed. And in that case I would be less inclined to place blame on upper management. However, I believe the former scenario is much more common, even at companies like Google.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you, some kind of narcoleptic?
And Facebook doesn't either. Not really. There is a guy posting as God on FB. According to reddit, he was banned for 3 days for posting an illustration of female reproductive organs and notes about what Sen. candidate Akin calls them. So obviously they are aware of the account, but haven't forced him to quit entirely.
The cost of bandwidth to be able to restore TB's of data in a reasonable amount of time is out of the reach of pretty much everyone but megacorps whereas an FC tape library comes in at under $15k.
True. I get spoiled since we have a 10Gbps connection; I don't have to consider bandwidth unless we are talking about going to our India facility.
You have a common sense view of "regulation equals safety equals good"
I would say my view is more nuanced: Some regulations equals a particular level of safety which may be good depending on the costs. I fully realize that a lot of regulations are bad and too costly - for example, the TSA.
You seem to have the view that any regulation equals cost equals bad. The problem with relying on the market in all cases is that 1) there is asymmetrical information (e.g. I don't know what chemicals they are using to frack, so I can't, as a market agent, correctly price natural gas) and 2) the market doesn't always price externalities correctly.
That wouldn't happen in the first place.
Sure it would. Companies and people will always take shortcuts to save costs. Look at Deepwater. The contractor used sub-standard practices in creating the cement casing. Now, BP has paid out billions in claims, but after the lawyers take their cut, I'm doubtful that the true cost of the oil spill will be recouped by those affected. It's virtually impossible to calculate the true cost to tourism, fishing, the environment, etc., so any settlement between BP and individuals or BP and the government will likely be incorrect. It makes more sense to insure (through regulations) that these types of events have a very small chance of happening.
One of the issues here is the is the different discount rates agents in the market have. A (public) corporation will tend to have a lower discount rate (i.e. preferring their money upfront), whereas an individual will tend to have a relatively higher discount rate (because they don't need to make their quarterly numbers). Because of this, a corporation may choose to save $100 today if the cost in a year is $120.
If there was a guy that lost his job and everyone on the block started donating food to him but you didn't want to, would you think it's acceptable for them to break into your house and take it by force?
What's the difference between that and from forcibly expelling me from their society, which is what would happen.
Do you have some numbers to back that up or is it your gut talking? I'm more inclined to believe our government military spending is due to us having bases and troops all over the world and starting wars every couple of years and pissing off half the world.
Of course our military spending is due to having bases and troops all over the world, and this is precisely why countries like the UK, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan can get away without spending as much on their militaries. Look at most NATO actions - who takes the largest role? Usually it's the US, while the rest of NATO (nearly) free-rides.
It would be hard to find a foreign politician who will say that they don't spend as much on defense because of the US's commitment to defend them, but it's an obvious conclusion when you compare military spending per GDP:
US: 4.8%
Taiwan: 2.7%
S. Korea: 2.7%
UK: 2.6%
Germany: 1.4%
Spain: 1.1%
Japan: 1.0%
Phillipines: 0.8%
The UK and Spain were targets of bombings on 7-7-07, so it's not like the US is the only target. Also, I would argue that you have cause and effect backwards. We are probably pissing everybody off because (in part) we are spending so much on defense.
No, you're wrong. He cleared security without a problem the first time.
I'm not surprised. The TSA couldn't find a scathing political statement if it was printed on the front of someone's shirt standing right in front of them.
No, you're not missing something. I was. Right in front of my face.
Thanks.
I think that the current system is more akin to "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" when it should be "pay for what you use".
There are two problems with this. First, it is extremely difficult to measure how much someone uses. How much do you use a road (this is actually an easy one - per gallon gas tax, all toll roads [might be impractical for surface streets], per mile car registration fees, etc.)? How much do you benefit from the presence of a fire department (even if your house doesn't catch fire, you benefit when they put out the fire down the block)? What about police? How much do you benefit from FDA regulations which ensure certain standards of food/drug quality? How much CDC or NASA do you use?
Second, often times the people who use a lot (i.e. those on welfare, receiving food stamps, etc.) are those least able to pay. It doesn't make much sense (when talking about the social safety net part of government) to say you can only receive a government benefit if you can pay for it.
I am skeptical of most claimed tangible public goods. Just to make it clear, a public good is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
[lighthouse analogy]
So if Exxon wasn't contributing to the lighthouse fund, it would be best for the lighthouse to turn off it's light when the Exxon Valdez was trying to navigate the treacherous reef during a storm? What we're talking about here isn't so much public goods as externalities and the Tragedy of the Commons. In your analogy, the non-paying shipping company probably isn't bearing all the cost of not-paying for lighthouse coverage. Even if there isn't a damages cap, it's not always possible to put a monetary figure on the costs of pollution. What's the financial impact of the Deepwater spill? Chernobyl? Is it possible for a single entity to cause an incident which costs more than it's ability to pay?
But we're getting away from the question of taxation and how to pay for government. If we're talking about lighthouses, police/fire, roads, parks, CDC, FDA.... excludability costs money. It's more efficient (but perhaps not fairer in your view), to offer those benefits to everyone. It might cost X to have a lighthouse. It will cost X+Y to have a lighthouse with a mechanism to determine who's paid and who hasn't.
To me, the discussion shouldn't be "how do we handle the excludability," but rather "what services should the government be providing. Maybe it shouldn't be providing crop or flood insurance. Maybe it shouldn't be providing unemployment insurance. Maybe it shouldn't be providing fire services.
Sure, Texas isn't going to let you drop a nuke on Oklahoma but outside of that, if you want to drop paratroopers in OK, that'll be okay with Texas,
I'm not sure why you're using States in your analogy. The issue is if the individual would voluntarily contribute to fund the national defense. If everyone else is paying $100 per year to support our military, why should I pay anything? The proof of the free-rider effect is shown when you look at Canada's military spending versus ours. Canada (and Mexico, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc.) don't have to pay for defense because they know we will.
OK, fair point on the SLA. Sounds like you have a pretty good storage solution.... but....
Glacier is at least 3 copies, each in separate disaster zones (they claim something ridiculous like 9 9's availability). Your solution sounds like 1 copy in the same disaster zone as you (which matters if this is backup storage).
Loading the data from storage to your production environment I'm not sure what's more expensive, the connectivity to be able to pull your data from Glacier at a reasonable rate, or the tape drives and controllers to unload the tapes. If you're only doing a couple tapes at a time, probably the latter; if your dealing with scores or hundreds of tapes, probably the former. (Don't forget to include labor costs for managing that hardware.)
Not to mention, I expect you don't have to play the game to rip it.
FWIW, I never had a problem with my uncracked version of KOTOR I.
How is a computer supposed to predict where and what size I want my windows, when I cant do that?
Chances are, you use the same or similar layout when you are doing the same task. When you have a certain combination of windows open, you probably arrange them in a very similar way. The computer could learn this overtime.
Or failing that, it could simply allow you to save a configuration.
Give you a hint, flying an instrument approach has a very complex workflow. My workspace is bolted to the airplane.
Finally! Now all those people can stop complaining about past predictions of flying car metaphors never materializing.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11073/stupid-geek-tricks-tile-or-cascade-multiple-windows-in-windows-7/
So in Win7, I either have to install 3rd party programs to manage the windows, or use the *Task Manager*?? You'd think Windows would do windows better.
Note: the Task Manager hack does not work on my machine with a dual monitor setup.
I'd like to be able to tile windows in Windows the same way I tile multiple spreadsheets in Excel, at the very least.
Can you enlighten us, because I would love to be able to tile my program windows the same way I tile my Excel windows.
When I saw the ads for 7 showcasing the feature where you drag the window to the side and it automatically resizes to fill exactly half of the screen I thought, "Awesome, that would actually be useful." Turns out it doesn't work so easily.
I actually use a mouse with the right hand and a magic trackpad on the left hand (with different gestures). Very efficient, at least for me.
I actually use a mouse with the left and magic fingers with my right hand (with different gestures). Very efficient, at least for me.
Oh wait, you're not talking about surfing porn, are you?
My menu isn't on a separate screen; I tap a vertical elipsis (three dots going up and down, : with an extra dot, whatever) and the menu pops up.
Does the menu take up the whole screen when it pops open? If so, I think that's the point. The Win7/XP start menu overlays a small portion of the desktop, so you maintain a cognitive connection with your work space while accessing the menu for whatever. I'm not sure I understand the benefit of this if you are opening a new program in full screen mode, but I guess the idea is that there is a difference in how our brain interprets the "work space" and the "start menu," so replacing a program in the work space is less cognitively challenging than replacing a program with a menu, then replacing that menu with a (new) program.
I have some 6k LTO3/4 tapes offsite, what would that cost in Glacier again?
Assuming 50/50 split and 100% utilization of the tape space (i.e. 600 GB per tape), then $36k per month. What do you spend to store those 6k tapes? It sounds like you're storing them offline (so no 5 hour SLA to first byte read), so your not exactly comparing apple to apples.
Also, I'm guessing you had to pay for those tapes. If we take an average cost of $30 per tape (you bought some when the generation was new I'm guessing), that's about $180k. Amortized over 3 years that an additional $5k per month.
GP link
2011 Annual revenue for AT&T = $126B
AAPL
2011 Annual revenue for Apple = $108B
But you're right, in the last quarter ending June 30 Apple outsold AT&T. In fact, over the last 4 quarters, Apples revenues were $148.8B versus $127.4B for AT&T
Donny you're out of your element! Dude, Verizon is not the issue here!
You have to pay $80 to get a tape back? That's a lot more expensive than Glacier. There you can retrieve up to 5% of your archive for free every month. After that it is $0.01/GB. Even if the 4 hour option is $40, that's still equivalent to the cost of retrieving 4TBs from Glacier (assuming you've already retrieved the 5%).
icebraining hit the nail on the head in the sibling post. You have put forth an argument for no taxation. And you know what, it's not completely without merit. On the other hand, I think you are confusing "taxes" with "contributions to society".
Go ahead and convinced yourself that society equals government and without taxing the poor we'd all be sitting in the mud banging rocks together instead of shooting to the moon and jacking off to Nature and Science magazines but that's utter bullshit.
There are some examples in history of societies which worked without an explicit taxation system (I'm thinking tribal societies like Native Americans; there may be other examples of more infrastructure-heavy societies that worked without any taxation, but I can't think of any. Do you have some examples?).
However, even in those tribal societies, there was an implicit taxation system. Everyone was obligated to participate and "give back" to the society. When you went out to hunt, you didn't keep all of the kill to yourself - you shared it with your family and tribe. This is a simplification of the social structure of thousands of different cultures, but the point is just because there isn't a bureaucracy forcing you to contribute at threat of physical detention doesn't mean that there isn't a cultural more forcing you to contribute at threat of banishment. By living in a modern society you are entering into an implicit agreement: you will benefit from the physical infrastructure, the police and fire protection, the national defense, the national parks, etc. In return, you agree to pay your taxes, and you agree to elect representatives who will shape tax and spending policies in ways you agree with.
A "good argument" for regressive tax system can only be subjective.
Ummm... no.
Here's an example: A flat consumption tax would be regressive, because people with lower incomes spend a greater percentage of their income each year. The richer you are, the more you save (i.e. the less you consume, as a percentage of your income). One can make objective arguments for such a tax by making the case that it is easier to collect, will raise the same amount of revenue as an income tax, etc.
Here's what it boils down to. All human interactions should be voluntary. If I clear a field, sew the seeds and tend the crops, I should be own the fruits of my labor.
I don't necessarily disagree. However, what you're missing is that there are some goods and services that require society working together as a whole. It doesn't make sense for individuals to voluntarily contribute to, for example, national defense. People, by their nature, will free-ride. Even when the volunteer payment for a free service model looks like it works (see: public radio), a closer examination shows that it is subsidized by advertising and taxes.
Can you give some examples of public goods which succeed with an all volunteer funding model?
but you're worried that the people who had to watch it on TV might have been affected?
Yes. Watching graphic violence on video affects people. If it is a real event (as opposed to fiction), it will affect them even more. Watching such an event in real life is undoubtedly even more traumatic. You don't seriously believe that a normal person could watch a video of a man sodomizing a toddler, then slicing the kid open with a butcher knife and not be affected by it, do you?
A regressive tax system is so bad for so many obvious reasons that it is unnecessary to refute the argument. But I honestly couldn't tell if he was seriously putting it forward or simply being trollish.
If you think you have a good argument for a regressive tax system, I'm all ears.
I generally agree with what you're saying. The point I'm trying to make is that you can hold the executive management responsible for the actions of middle managers when they create incentives for those middle managers to prioritize, for example, bottom line profit of that manager's division above all else. This could incentivize the manager to cut corners and costs by dumping waste illegally, or by hiring contractors and not giving them proper psychological support.
Now, to your point, if a company has a more holistic incentive structure designed to reward middle managers who don't do these "bad" things, the bad things might still happen because people are flawed. And in that case I would be less inclined to place blame on upper management. However, I believe the former scenario is much more common, even at companies like Google.