"As opposed to what? Somebody else trading 15 hours of THEIR life simply so YOU can live a healthy life?" "Why should money I earn be taxed and used to pay for benefits for you?"
Uh, if you pay for your own insurance and file a claim, where do you think your insurance company acquires the money to pay for your claim? Do you honestly believe they simply pay you with the money you already gave them?
No matter what insurance you pay into, you *will* be paying for somebody else's benefit, as they will be paying for your benefit as well. That is the *very nature* of insurance.
If you *still* feel different, you should put your money where your mouth is and cancel all your health insurance policies and simply put those monthly payments into a self-guided investment account.... and good luck with *that*.
Sure, Japan can try to sell the USD to buy back yen, but not that many countries hold that much yen. Tell me, who is going to sell yen back to Japan?
More than $4 trillion dollars worth of currency is traded every single business day. There is absolutely no problem finding someone to sell Yen, especially since Yen is the Carry Trade currency of choice, the only question is at what price. The fact that you made such a statement tells me that you really don't know how money, or foreign exchange markets operate.
They can't buy oil from Saudi Arabia in yen. So Saudi Arabia has very little yen to sell back to them.
Again, you're making the gross misunderstanding that the trade of commodities *settles* in the currency they're *priced* in, when most do not. They are almost always settled in the traders' native currency (on both sides of the deal).
I can't even respond to anything else you've written because it's painfully obvious that what you know of finance comes from news articles, not from studying it in depth, nor does it come from any real or meaningful experience. You think the article (about China) still upholds your position because you've simply picked and chosen what you've wanted to see in it, and simply ignored everything else in it and and everything else I've written because you simply repeat your *very* incorrect understanding of how financial markets work.
You keep asking me to point out where you're wrong, and when I do you simply ignore it and repeat yourself.
Reading your arguments is like... reading an alchemists reasoning how adding fire to earth and a dash of water should produce another elemental form.
Instead of picking and choosing what to see, ignoring everything else, and repeating yourself, (which works very well with religion but falls flat with science) you really need to pick up a book (the one I suggested is *very* good) and gain a level of understanding that's beyond what you've currently pieced together from what bits you've read online. Again, this is painfully obvious from the 3 or 4 posts that you've made (actually, fewer... because you simply repeated yourself).
I would go so far as to say that you're simply sticking to what you currently believe because you *really* don't like to be wrong. Scientists on the other hand, *LOVE* to be wrong. Why? Because scientists love to be right!
So seriously, buy that used text and study it. Ditch this financial alchemy and gain financial science.
Although commodities are *priced* in USD, their trade does not *only* involve USD. What you're saying would be true if USD were the *only* currency in the world.
The world is *not* Zimbabwe, because all the central banks in the world are NOT inflating their currencies at the printing press.
For you analogy to be comparable:
the *U.S.* is Zimbabwe, the Fed is Mugabe, U.S. citizens are "the rest of Zimbabwe", the rest of the world is the rest of the world.
You're rational, but it's clear that there is some kind of misunderstanding of how international trade and finance operate.
- Devaluation of USD is *not* fine because although they are *priced* in USD they are produced and sold by foreigners who want to be paid in their *own currency*. This means the Japanese take the USD they received on the sale of their cars and Nintendo Wii's and sell them to take home Yen. The Koreans take the USD they received on the sale of their cell phones and LCD tv's and sell them to take home Won. The Vietnamese sell the USD they receive from the sale of their rice to take home Dong.
Although commodities are *priced* in USD, the trade ends with somebody selling their USD for their own native currency.
- World currencies do not inflate when USD inflates. Inflation of a currency is *directly* caused by the over-supply of that *particular* currency. If the USD inflates by the printing press, Thailand's Baht will rise in relation to USD, because the supply of Baht will be lower than USD on a relative scale.
- The world is not like Zimbabwe, because supply of world currencies are not being inflated by the printing press, as is being planned in the U.S. at the moment.
For a comprehensive peek at what China is actually thinking and saying *right now*:
Pay special attention to the second half of the article.
Also, google "fiscal policy", "monetary policy", and "bond pricing"... and learn how a bond's fair market value changes with interest rate increases and decreases.
For an even better source, one that clearly outlines and explains the links between currencies, government debt, international trade, government bonds, the Fed, interest rates, and commodity prices... buy a used copy of the Economics portion of the CFA Level 1 series of texts (no older than 2007) off ebay or craigslist. I think a guy like you will absorb the material in no time flat and gain a new level of understanding of how international trade and finance operates.
Re:This is just a stupid arrangement
on
Inside Factory China
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I would say "you are fucked" because you (or rather, the U.S. government) depends on not only a) entities buying your treasury securities now, but also b) entities buying your treasury in the future. The first wave of baby boomers will be eligible for social security and medicare benefits in the next 16 to 24 months, there is no way in hell the U.S. will be able to fund these obligations in the state the U.S. economy is currently in. This means they'll have to borrow more money in the future.
If the U.S. behaves like they're still top dog and enact policies that devalues all the money they owe to everybody else in the world, guess what, nobody's going to be in line to buy those treasuries when the U.S. needs to sell them the most.
They'd be fucked even more because the U.S. simply has no manufacturing industry. Nobody in the U.S. would even be able to buy a single computer, television set, fax machine, cellphone, or even dog food because companies need to borrow money to buy from suppliers overseas. With savings rates in negative territory, there is no way in hell anybody would lend the U.S. any money whatsoever if they adopt this "it's my currency and I'll inflate it if I want to... you'll get screwed but not me" attitude.
Right now, the U.S. has to convince the world to buy $800B of U.S. government debt. They can't even do *that*, which is why they're selling 30-year bonds to the Fed, because the Fed is the only entity willing to buy them. This action by the Fed *will* inflate the USD, because they simply create the money out of thin air. If China doesn't want to be made an ass by the people who owe them billions, they simply have to sell. The U.S. government will then have to convince the world to buy... not $800B of government debt... but $1.5 trillion. This action alone will *flood* the market with USD and push it down to unbelievable levels. Sure, the value of government debt will decrease because of the massive inflation, but *everything* in America will increase in price.
Why? Because America doesn't make anything anymore. Everything needs to be imported, and importing means paying foreign suppliers in their own currency. So good luck convincing foreign suppliers to accept worthless USD as payment. Commodity prices will go through the roof because they're all price in USD and consumed everywhere else in the world.
In summary, decreasing the purchasing power of the USD is *not* the solution to any of the U.S.'s current problems. Pissing off the largest debtor by inflating the currency may save you a couple hundred billion at first, but you'll pay it all back later (and then some) when you're forced import everything you need... at now-higher prices.
And it's not just China. Do you think if a massive sell-off starts, central banks and investment institutions around the world will sit idly by and wait to be the last one holding depreciating bonds that nobody wants? No way. If you thought the price of oil dropped quickly, it'll be nothing compared to how quick and how far the USD will fall once the selling starts and traders begin short-selling treasuries and USD.
I don't believe for a second that you're stupid, because you fully understand all the immediate implications.
Worse for China - it's not like China can throw the USA into prison, or seize and liquidate the USA's assets.
Anyway if the USA wants to, it can ask the Federal Reserve to wave its magic wand and create USD out of nowhere to pay China. After all the loans are in US Dollars;).
You're missing something here. BOTH China and the Treasury have the capability of selling $700B in U.S. Treasury securities.
Right now, BOTH entities have gigantic red buttons labeled "SELL", and don't for a second think that China won't push their button when the Treasury pushes theirs.
With interest rates as low as they are now, the fair market value of the bonds China's holding onto now are at their maximum. Their market values can only go down from here, especially if you realize that once the Treasury starts selling those bonds to the Fed, currently-held bonds will depreciate with the USD.
So to complete your analogy, If I borrow $100K, the bank controls you. If you borrow $1 trillion, you control the bank. If the bank sells your debt to a hundred thousand people, you are fucked.
"...divide the Joes into two groups: those who can afford the pricier version, and those who cannot. If you only have the pricier version, you lose the latter group. If you only have the cheaper version, you lose part of your profits from the former group. By having both, you improve your profits."
and what I said...
"differentiate their output so as to take away as much consumer surplus possible under the demand curve"... describe the same thing.
You described the mechanism, I summarized the effect.
The textbook says, if a company is in a monopoly position, the best way to maximize revenues is for them to differentiate their output so as to take away as much consumer surplus possible under the demand curve.
So, of course, they differentiate their product.
What they've failed to understand is this factoid completely relies on the consumer's ability to differentiate between the products! If 100,000 Joe Schmoes don't know the difference between Home Basic and Home Premium, then guess what, revenue from the two will just be the average prices between the two as Joe Schmoes around the world toss coins to decide which to buy. Some will buy the "better" (more expensive) one because they can't tell but want to "be safe", while others will get the cheaper one because they can't tell and want to save some money. MS will have been better off just selling an all-encompassing "Home" version at a price set at the averages of the Starter and two Home versions and not incur the overhead costs of differentiating the two versions in the first place.
Bottom line: The people who can differentiate between Start, Home Basic and Home Premium won't bother with either, and the people who can't won't care which one they get.
I mean, three different versions for non-geeks?? Of all products to differentiate, they choose the one aimed at the customer demographic who are least equipped to make an informed decision between all options.
Abstract: Nobody will know why something so large and simple was created, what it's good for, how it's supposed to be used. It will face complete abandonment and isolation, only to be admired and appreciated by a handful of people once a year.
All the roads surrounding the airport are all messed up as well; almost none of them match up with the pictures. And, they're all labelled "Flugplatz".
... the winning company actually *implements* the "intended" level of openness and has it in their terms-of-use section in their contracts.
A popular thing for telecoms to do these days seems to be re-interpreting words in contracts. "Unlimited access" is re-interpreted to mean "Unlimited connection time", even though there are at most 744 hours per month. "Unlimited internet service" is re-interpreted to mean "unlimited, as long as you don't transfer more than XXGB a month". I don't even want to get into what Comcast redefined to get their computer-impersonating policies to fly. Companies are redefining words like it's going out of fashion.
Google may be cheering and patting each other on back for a job well done, but to be honest, I don't think they've achieved anything they've set out to do. All they've done is get the FCC to say "Oh yeah, and the network must be open to other devices", while everyone nods "M-hm, oh yes of course" while looking at their toes.
Going so far as telling everyone how clever they were the first opportunity allowed seems a bit premature. The network's not up, the company's services aren't for sale, the consumer-end terms-of-use contracts aren't drafted, so what exactly are they cheering about when they got a telecom company to say "Okay, we'll 'allow' 'open' 'devices' and 'open' 'applications'"?
What is suggested will seem to only work if there are lots and lots and lots and lots of parameters/criteria, so the system can attribute that rejection to some other criteria instead of that criteria. ie. If someone whose criteria was "goth" were rejected by someone who selected "bouncy", then the "goth-and-bouncy" pair's probability should be lowered. However if you don't have enough criteria, you'll end up lowering "bouncy-and-bouncy"'s probability, which doesn't make much sense since we're hoping that people with similar criteria match. This is sort of what Hebbian learning is.
If I were to create a system for matching people, I would pose a number of questions to everyone that would require at least a 500-word response. "What are some of the things you enjoy at work?", "What do you enjoy doing in your free time?", "How did you come to like the kind of music you listen to?", "What are your favourite types of food?", "Do you lead an active lifestyle and how does it make you feel?", etc etc. These responses would be visible to nobody except their authors.
Applying some fancy math and matching based on what they type, you'll get many more higher-quality matches, and fewer "criteria cheaters" who purposely try to match criteria with people they like. When the system spots a match, invitations are sent to both to invite them to talk with each other. It is then they are allowed to look at each others responses and have something common to talk about. If you have a "criteria cheater" who just pasted random keywords into their responses, the other person can flag them as a "criteria cheater" or something. Then, his responses will be automatically erased, and the probability of that person participating in a future match will be lowered.
This isn't perfect, but I would say it would be a significant head start and offer much more than what's out there now. Obviously, this type of system encourages big and long responses to the questions by offering a much larger set of criteria to be extracted from each response by the match-making part of the system. And the best thing is, these criteria are naturally user-supplied and not confined to the limited set like all those other dating sites use.
To keep things fresh, you can reset your system and regroup everyone on response-similarity one a week or month or whatever, because inevitably... more people would have joined and added responses of their own.
This type of system would pretty much work the way Google's "similar pages" link works. Clustering pages (in your case, people) together that share similar text. There are a number of different algorithms you can use for clustering. My personal favourite is "Stochastic Proximity Embedding" http://www.dimitris-agrafiotis.com/Papers/jcc20078.pdf for its simplicity and relative speed. You won't need the "absolute bestest zomg!" clustering algorithm because matchmaking itself is very subjective and non-exact.
Heck, you can even do some fancy things with the results and have people browse everyone else on a huge huge map! Here are some visuals from little tests I did using grouping blogs on Xanga:
Why are these contests and prizes all-or-nothing? Why not split the single goal and 30 million prize money into smaller goals and smaller chunks of prize money so more people can participate? Is there any reason why this xprize can't be split in two? One $15mil prize for designing a rocket to carry a 50lb payload to the moon, and another $15mil prize for designing a 50lb robot to land, roam around, and beam pictures back to earth? Could these not be split even further to make the contest challenges and prizes more attainable for guys who don't work at nasa or are involved in large research projects at universities?
I think these contests are great, but as the prizes get bigger and the goals become grander, will anybody be expected to participate in a potential all-or-nothing "Land a person on Mars" X-Prize for $10 billion dollars?.
If these contests and prizes are designed to spur research and development, split the contest goals up so more people can participate.
There's a recent google talk about this very type of fusion device. The guy giving the talk addresses the problems with the grid design, and apparently, the grid design wouldn't work because the grids melt because they're not transparent enough to the ions and just absorb too many of them.
He goes on to talk about his work in replacing the grid with another mechanism to ionize the gas, which actually works. And the power output increases 7 orders of magnitude for each doubling of the reactor diameter (if I remember correctly. it's in the video).
The video is 1.5 hours long, but well worth the time if you're curious about this stuff. You have to pay very close attention though, as he glosses over some important concepts really quickly.
Mr Thompson criticised the decision to have an employee take him through the game, arguing he could have avoided making violent choices.
I think this is the most telling of Mr Thompson's state of mind. He may not have realized it, but he just defeated his entire standpoint against any videogame. What he says is completely true about games, and about life in general. Yes, kids *can* do violent things, but it's up to the individual to "avoid making violent choices" in video games and in life. It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their kids how to deal with frustrating situations, and to be the prime example.
Mr. Thompson is really setting a bad example to the very kids he's trying to protect. Avoiding "making violent choices" involves restraint. But him lashing out at everyone and everything, using his lawyer status as a tool to frighten others not as knowledgable in law to do what he wants done, is sending the opposite message.
Not totally accurate. They're not paying for speed, they're paying for priority. It's all about the highway's capacity to carry cars and an internet connection's capacity to carry data.
To use your highway analogy correctly, tiered internet would be analagous to giving cars priority access to highways, and forcing other cars to move to the right when a car with priority approaches in the rear view mirror. In the end, you'll end up having highways jammed full with access-paying cars, while those non-paying are stuck on the on-ramps. This way, these network-providers will have their networks traffic-jammed with fee-paying customers without actually adding *any* value whatsoever, which is totally awe$$$ome in the eyes of these network providers/carriers/whatever.
They have a XX-MBit pipe, and they give you a guarantee of your priority in exchange for money. Of course, people who don't pay have no guarantees for bandwidth at all... which may allow them to "close off lanes" and make the pipes narrower, forcing even more non-paying cars off to the right because hey... access to bandwidth for the non-paying is not guaranteed.
I swear, who comes up with these outrageous schemes.
It's interesting that the original professor's experimental results were discredited by the methods he used to detect fusion. First he detected neutrons, but then there was controversy about whether he was detecting fusion neutrons or png neutrons. Then, when he changed certain things, and still detected neutrons... everyone questioned whether or not they were background neutrons or fusion neutrons. Basically, they wanted to see the moment of neutron detection coincide with the moment of light creation down to the nanosecond (I think).
Now, these guys are using other methods of detecting fusion by neutron energy levels, and tritium. I just hope that the levels they detected were WAY above the statistical normal amount of 2.5MeV neutrons and tritium in deuterized-acetone controls.
are saying that this is a huge waste and pretty much pointless, and how Google does cool things first and then figures out how to make money off it later. But I believe that Google already knows how to make money off this.
Google makes money by selling advertising "words"... auction-style. Now imagine the space that 'words' encompass. It's friggn huge.
Now imagine how Google can make scads of money if they sell nearly limitless virtual billboards to advertisers for people using these 3D maps.
Advertiser want to put up a virtual billboard advertising a hotel when you do a virtual fly-through of the San Fransisco Bay area?
"Who's the highest bidder?".
Trump want to stick his big "TRUMP" letters on virtual models of his own hotels and casinos? He's gotta pay up.
I think this has the potential to make Google lots more advertising revenue, once they scan more cities, and make this tool free for the public.
And heck, maybe subscribers to this 3D map service can bypass the ads!
Slashdot Mirror
"As opposed to what? Somebody else trading 15 hours of THEIR life simply so YOU can live a healthy life?"
"Why should money I earn be taxed and used to pay for benefits for you?"
Uh, if you pay for your own insurance and file a claim, where do you think your insurance company acquires the money to pay for your claim? Do you honestly believe they simply pay you with the money you already gave them?
No matter what insurance you pay into, you *will* be paying for somebody else's benefit, as they will be paying for your benefit as well. That is the *very nature* of insurance.
If you *still* feel different, you should put your money where your mouth is and cancel all your health insurance policies and simply put those monthly payments into a self-guided investment account. ... and good luck with *that*.
Sure, Japan can try to sell the USD to buy back yen, but not that many countries hold that much yen. Tell me, who is going to sell yen back to Japan?
More than $4 trillion dollars worth of currency is traded every single business day. There is absolutely no problem finding someone to sell Yen, especially since Yen is the Carry Trade currency of choice, the only question is at what price. The fact that you made such a statement tells me that you really don't know how money, or foreign exchange markets operate.
They can't buy oil from Saudi Arabia in yen. So Saudi Arabia has very little yen to sell back to them.
Again, you're making the gross misunderstanding that the trade of commodities *settles* in the currency they're *priced* in, when most do not. They are almost always settled in the traders' native currency (on both sides of the deal).
I can't even respond to anything else you've written because it's painfully obvious that what you know of finance comes from news articles, not from studying it in depth, nor does it come from any real or meaningful experience. You think the article (about China) still upholds your position because you've simply picked and chosen what you've wanted to see in it, and simply ignored everything else in it and and everything else I've written because you simply repeat your *very* incorrect understanding of how financial markets work.
You keep asking me to point out where you're wrong, and when I do you simply ignore it and repeat yourself.
Reading your arguments is like... reading an alchemists reasoning how adding fire to earth and a dash of water should produce another elemental form.
Instead of picking and choosing what to see, ignoring everything else, and repeating yourself, (which works very well with religion but falls flat with science) you really need to pick up a book (the one I suggested is *very* good) and gain a level of understanding that's beyond what you've currently pieced together from what bits you've read online. Again, this is painfully obvious from the 3 or 4 posts that you've made (actually, fewer... because you simply repeated yourself).
I would go so far as to say that you're simply sticking to what you currently believe because you *really* don't like to be wrong. Scientists on the other hand, *LOVE* to be wrong. Why? Because scientists love to be right!
So seriously, buy that used text and study it. Ditch this financial alchemy and gain financial science.
Although commodities are *priced* in USD, their trade does not *only* involve USD. What you're saying would be true if USD were the *only* currency in the world.
The world is *not* Zimbabwe, because all the central banks in the world are NOT inflating their currencies at the printing press.
For you analogy to be comparable:
the *U.S.* is Zimbabwe,
the Fed is Mugabe,
U.S. citizens are "the rest of Zimbabwe",
the rest of the world is the rest of the world.
You're rational, but it's clear that there is some kind of misunderstanding of how international trade and finance operate.
- Devaluation of USD is *not* fine because although they are *priced* in USD they are produced and sold by foreigners who want to be paid in their *own currency*. This means the Japanese take the USD they received on the sale of their cars and Nintendo Wii's and sell them to take home Yen. The Koreans take the USD they received on the sale of their cell phones and LCD tv's and sell them to take home Won. The Vietnamese sell the USD they receive from the sale of their rice to take home Dong.
Although commodities are *priced* in USD, the trade ends with somebody selling their USD for their own native currency.
- World currencies do not inflate when USD inflates. Inflation of a currency is *directly* caused by the over-supply of that *particular* currency. If the USD inflates by the printing press, Thailand's Baht will rise in relation to USD, because the supply of Baht will be lower than USD on a relative scale.
- The world is not like Zimbabwe, because supply of world currencies are not being inflated by the printing press, as is being planned in the U.S. at the moment.
For a comprehensive peek at what China is actually thinking and saying *right now*:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=a_dsDz145J_A&refer=asia
Pay special attention to the second half of the article.
Also, google "fiscal policy", "monetary policy", and "bond pricing"... and learn how a bond's fair market value changes with interest rate increases and decreases.
For an even better source, one that clearly outlines and explains the links between currencies, government debt, international trade, government bonds, the Fed, interest rates, and commodity prices... buy a used copy of the Economics portion of the CFA Level 1 series of texts (no older than 2007) off ebay or craigslist. I think a guy like you will absorb the material in no time flat and gain a new level of understanding of how international trade and finance operates.
I would say "you are fucked" because you (or rather, the U.S. government) depends on not only a) entities buying your treasury securities now, but also b) entities buying your treasury in the future. The first wave of baby boomers will be eligible for social security and medicare benefits in the next 16 to 24 months, there is no way in hell the U.S. will be able to fund these obligations in the state the U.S. economy is currently in. This means they'll have to borrow more money in the future.
If the U.S. behaves like they're still top dog and enact policies that devalues all the money they owe to everybody else in the world, guess what, nobody's going to be in line to buy those treasuries when the U.S. needs to sell them the most.
They'd be fucked even more because the U.S. simply has no manufacturing industry. Nobody in the U.S. would even be able to buy a single computer, television set, fax machine, cellphone, or even dog food because companies need to borrow money to buy from suppliers overseas. With savings rates in negative territory, there is no way in hell anybody would lend the U.S. any money whatsoever if they adopt this "it's my currency and I'll inflate it if I want to... you'll get screwed but not me" attitude.
Right now, the U.S. has to convince the world to buy $800B of U.S. government debt. They can't even do *that*, which is why they're selling 30-year bonds to the Fed, because the Fed is the only entity willing to buy them. This action by the Fed *will* inflate the USD, because they simply create the money out of thin air. If China doesn't want to be made an ass by the people who owe them billions, they simply have to sell. The U.S. government will then have to convince the world to buy... not $800B of government debt... but $1.5 trillion. This action alone will *flood* the market with USD and push it down to unbelievable levels. Sure, the value of government debt will decrease because of the massive inflation, but *everything* in America will increase in price.
Why? Because America doesn't make anything anymore. Everything needs to be imported, and importing means paying foreign suppliers in their own currency. So good luck convincing foreign suppliers to accept worthless USD as payment. Commodity prices will go through the roof because they're all price in USD and consumed everywhere else in the world.
In summary, decreasing the purchasing power of the USD is *not* the solution to any of the U.S.'s current problems. Pissing off the largest debtor by inflating the currency may save you a couple hundred billion at first, but you'll pay it all back later (and then some) when you're forced import everything you need... at now-higher prices.
And it's not just China. Do you think if a massive sell-off starts, central banks and investment institutions around the world will sit idly by and wait to be the last one holding depreciating bonds that nobody wants? No way. If you thought the price of oil dropped quickly, it'll be nothing compared to how quick and how far the USD will fall once the selling starts and traders begin short-selling treasuries and USD.
I don't believe for a second that you're stupid, because you fully understand all the immediate implications.
You just need to think ahead a couple steps more.
I would think this problem would be solved if the required ratio were set to equal the growth rate of new users.
Really, the economics of seeding ratios parallels those of interest rates and money supply.
Worse for China - it's not like China can throw the USA into prison, or seize and liquidate the USA's assets.
Anyway if the USA wants to, it can ask the Federal Reserve to wave its magic wand and create USD out of nowhere to pay China. After all the loans are in US Dollars ;).
You're missing something here.
BOTH China and the Treasury have the capability of selling $700B in U.S. Treasury securities.
Right now, BOTH entities have gigantic red buttons labeled "SELL", and don't for a second think that China won't push their button when the Treasury pushes theirs.
With interest rates as low as they are now, the fair market value of the bonds China's holding onto now are at their maximum. Their market values can only go down from here, especially if you realize that once the Treasury starts selling those bonds to the Fed, currently-held bonds will depreciate with the USD.
So to complete your analogy,
If I borrow $100K, the bank controls you.
If you borrow $1 trillion, you control the bank.
If the bank sells your debt to a hundred thousand people, you are fucked.
"...divide the Joes into two groups: those who can afford the pricier version, and those who cannot. If you only have the pricier version, you lose the latter group. If you only have the cheaper version, you lose part of your profits from the former group. By having both, you improve your profits."
and what I said ...
"differentiate their output so as to take away as much consumer surplus possible under the demand curve" ... describe the same thing.
You described the mechanism, I summarized the effect.
Observe: http://www.med.govt.nz/upload/45393/fig3.jpg
"That's not how demand curves work. Not at all."
That's exactly how demand curves work.
The textbook says, if a company is in a monopoly position, the best way to maximize revenues is for them to differentiate their output so as to take away as much consumer surplus possible under the demand curve.
So, of course, they differentiate their product.
What they've failed to understand is this factoid completely relies on the consumer's ability to differentiate between the products! If 100,000 Joe Schmoes don't know the difference between Home Basic and Home Premium, then guess what, revenue from the two will just be the average prices between the two as Joe Schmoes around the world toss coins to decide which to buy. Some will buy the "better" (more expensive) one because they can't tell but want to "be safe", while others will get the cheaper one because they can't tell and want to save some money. MS will have been better off just selling an all-encompassing "Home" version at a price set at the averages of the Starter and two Home versions and not incur the overhead costs of differentiating the two versions in the first place.
Bottom line:
The people who can differentiate between Start, Home Basic and Home Premium won't bother with either, and the people who can't won't care which one they get.
I mean, three different versions for non-geeks?? Of all products to differentiate, they choose the one aimed at the customer demographic who are least equipped to make an informed decision between all options.
Geez, God help you Microsoft.
Project Stonehenge!
Abstract:
Nobody will know why something so large and simple was created, what it's good for, how it's supposed to be used. It will face complete abandonment and isolation, only to be admired and appreciated by a handful of people once a year.
I keed I keed!
I wonder if this is the evolutionary benefit to having so much 'junk' dna; to absorb copy errors.
All the roads surrounding the airport are all messed up as well; almost none of them match up with the pictures. And, they're all labelled "Flugplatz".
Just saw a mini-documentary on this a couple days ago. Turns out many electronic parts are simply burned to get at the precious metals.
http://current.com/items/76355482_toxic_villages
Is there any way to get at the metals via shredding and then panning? Any material or mining engineers have any input?
Unfortunately no.
All the politicians out there that blow hot air all suck as well.
... the winning company actually *implements* the "intended" level of openness and has it in their terms-of-use section in their contracts.
A popular thing for telecoms to do these days seems to be re-interpreting words in contracts. "Unlimited access" is re-interpreted to mean "Unlimited connection time", even though there are at most 744 hours per month. "Unlimited internet service" is re-interpreted to mean "unlimited, as long as you don't transfer more than XXGB a month". I don't even want to get into what Comcast redefined to get their computer-impersonating policies to fly. Companies are redefining words like it's going out of fashion.
Google may be cheering and patting each other on back for a job well done, but to be honest, I don't think they've achieved anything they've set out to do. All they've done is get the FCC to say "Oh yeah, and the network must be open to other devices", while everyone nods "M-hm, oh yes of course" while looking at their toes.
Going so far as telling everyone how clever they were the first opportunity allowed seems a bit premature. The network's not up, the company's services aren't for sale, the consumer-end terms-of-use contracts aren't drafted, so what exactly are they cheering about when they got a telecom company to say "Okay, we'll 'allow' 'open' 'devices' and 'open' 'applications'"?
... but you can't ignore the human element.
"Criteria-cheaters".
What is suggested will seem to only work if there are lots and lots and lots and lots of parameters/criteria, so the system can attribute that rejection to some other criteria instead of that criteria. ie. If someone whose criteria was "goth" were rejected by someone who selected "bouncy", then the "goth-and-bouncy" pair's probability should be lowered. However if you don't have enough criteria, you'll end up lowering "bouncy-and-bouncy"'s probability, which doesn't make much sense since we're hoping that people with similar criteria match. This is sort of what Hebbian learning is.
If I were to create a system for matching people, I would pose a number of questions to everyone that would require at least a 500-word response. "What are some of the things you enjoy at work?", "What do you enjoy doing in your free time?", "How did you come to like the kind of music you listen to?", "What are your favourite types of food?", "Do you lead an active lifestyle and how does it make you feel?", etc etc. These responses would be visible to nobody except their authors.
Applying some fancy math and matching based on what they type, you'll get many more higher-quality matches, and fewer "criteria cheaters" who purposely try to match criteria with people they like. When the system spots a match, invitations are sent to both to invite them to talk with each other. It is then they are allowed to look at each others responses and have something common to talk about. If you have a "criteria cheater" who just pasted random keywords into their responses, the other person can flag them as a "criteria cheater" or something. Then, his responses will be automatically erased, and the probability of that person participating in a future match will be lowered.
This isn't perfect, but I would say it would be a significant head start and offer much more than what's out there now. Obviously, this type of system encourages big and long responses to the questions by offering a much larger set of criteria to be extracted from each response by the match-making part of the system. And the best thing is, these criteria are naturally user-supplied and not confined to the limited set like all those other dating sites use.
To keep things fresh, you can reset your system and regroup everyone on response-similarity one a week or month or whatever, because inevitably... more people would have joined and added responses of their own.
This type of system would pretty much work the way Google's "similar pages" link works. Clustering pages (in your case, people) together that share similar text. There are a number of different algorithms you can use for clustering. My personal favourite is "Stochastic Proximity Embedding" http://www.dimitris-agrafiotis.com/Papers/jcc20078.pdf for its simplicity and relative speed. You won't need the "absolute bestest zomg!" clustering algorithm because matchmaking itself is very subjective and non-exact.
Heck, you can even do some fancy things with the results and have people browse everyone else on a huge huge map!
Here are some visuals from little tests I did using grouping blogs on Xanga:
Xanga Galaxy
Zoom in
Zoom in some more
And even more
And yes, even more
In your case, each dot would represent a person instead of a blog entry.
Anyway, that's
You're confusing incompetence with ignorance.
There is a big difference between the two.
Why are these contests and prizes all-or-nothing? Why not split the single goal and 30 million prize money into smaller goals and smaller chunks of prize money so more people can participate? Is there any reason why this xprize can't be split in two? One $15mil prize for designing a rocket to carry a 50lb payload to the moon, and another $15mil prize for designing a 50lb robot to land, roam around, and beam pictures back to earth? Could these not be split even further to make the contest challenges and prizes more attainable for guys who don't work at nasa or are involved in large research projects at universities?
I think these contests are great, but as the prizes get bigger and the goals become grander, will anybody be expected to participate in a potential all-or-nothing "Land a person on Mars" X-Prize for $10 billion dollars?.
If these contests and prizes are designed to spur research and development, split the contest goals up so more people can participate.
There's a recent google talk about this very type of fusion device. The guy giving the talk addresses the problems with the grid design, and apparently, the grid design wouldn't work because the grids melt because they're not transparent enough to the ions and just absorb too many of them.
6 673788606&q=fusion+google+talk
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=199632184
He goes on to talk about his work in replacing the grid with another mechanism to ionize the gas, which actually works. And the power output increases 7 orders of magnitude for each doubling of the reactor diameter (if I remember correctly. it's in the video).
The video is 1.5 hours long, but well worth the time if you're curious about this stuff.
You have to pay very close attention though, as he glosses over some important concepts really quickly.
Mr Thompson criticised the decision to have an employee take him through the game, arguing he could have avoided making violent choices.
I think this is the most telling of Mr Thompson's state of mind.
He may not have realized it, but he just defeated his entire standpoint against any videogame. What he says is completely true about games, and about life in general. Yes, kids *can* do violent things, but it's up to the individual to "avoid making violent choices" in video games and in life. It is the responsibility of the parents to teach their kids how to deal with frustrating situations, and to be the prime example.
Mr. Thompson is really setting a bad example to the very kids he's trying to protect. Avoiding "making violent choices" involves restraint. But him lashing out at everyone and everything, using his lawyer status as a tool to frighten others not as knowledgable in law to do what he wants done, is sending the opposite message.
63 403 200 rods per hogshead
Not totally accurate. They're not paying for speed, they're paying for priority. It's all about the highway's capacity to carry cars and an internet connection's capacity to carry data.
To use your highway analogy correctly, tiered internet would be analagous to giving cars priority access to highways, and forcing other cars to move to the right when a car with priority approaches in the rear view mirror. In the end, you'll end up having highways jammed full with access-paying cars, while those non-paying are stuck on the on-ramps. This way, these network-providers will have their networks traffic-jammed with fee-paying customers without actually adding *any* value whatsoever, which is totally awe$$$ome in the eyes of these network providers/carriers/whatever.
They have a XX-MBit pipe, and they give you a guarantee of your priority in exchange for money.
Of course, people who don't pay have no guarantees for bandwidth at all... which may allow them to "close off lanes" and make the pipes narrower, forcing even more non-paying cars off to the right because hey... access to bandwidth for the non-paying is not guaranteed.
I swear, who comes up with these outrageous schemes.
Or HaleBerry...
Combine the best of bost worlds.
Streaming, live, bittorrent-style broadcasting, even have DRM if you want to or not.
Have you ever heard of pplive?
www.pplive.com
www5.pplive.com/english/
The quality is surprisingly good.
It's interesting that the original professor's experimental results were discredited by the methods he used to detect fusion. First he detected neutrons, but then there was controversy about whether he was detecting fusion neutrons or png neutrons. Then, when he changed certain things, and still detected neutrons... everyone questioned whether or not they were background neutrons or fusion neutrons. Basically, they wanted to see the moment of neutron detection coincide with the moment of light creation down to the nanosecond (I think).
Now, these guys are using other methods of detecting fusion by neutron energy levels, and tritium. I just hope that the levels they detected were WAY above the statistical normal amount of 2.5MeV neutrons and tritium in deuterized-acetone controls.
are saying that this is a huge waste and pretty much pointless, and how Google does cool things first and then figures out how to make money off it later. But I believe that Google already knows how to make money off this.
Google makes money by selling advertising "words"... auction-style. Now imagine the space that 'words' encompass. It's friggn huge.
Now imagine how Google can make scads of money if they sell nearly limitless virtual billboards to advertisers for people using these 3D maps.
Advertiser want to put up a virtual billboard advertising a hotel when you do a virtual fly-through of the San Fransisco Bay area?
"Who's the highest bidder?".
Trump want to stick his big "TRUMP" letters on virtual models of his own hotels and casinos? He's gotta pay up.
I think this has the potential to make Google lots more advertising revenue, once they scan more cities, and make this tool free for the public.
And heck, maybe subscribers to this 3D map service can bypass the ads!