...the freedom and liberty you celebrate might erode the family unit that is the backbone of some other culture somewhere else. Who knows? Who are you to judge?"
On intellectual level I agree with this but not in the practice. There is certainly costs to everything but in this practice this means that some homosexuals get executed in name of "traditional values", people are not allowed to use Twitter in name of "keeping society peaceful" et cetera. Human societies consist of all kinds of groups competing with each other for status and resources, and usually a big web of shady beliefs are needed to keep those in power. Just look at the recent Snowden leaks.
But seriously though those (Indian tribes? Care to give real examples?) are extremely small costs compared to the world peace that Internet and spread of culture is pushing. Lack of communication between people leads to groups starting hostilities with each other. For example, I've met a lot of people from my neighboring country online that I would not otherwise. I think those relationships will help to promote peace between our countries more than any diplomats could. Similarly, I think Hollywood movies and tv-series will promote more peace in the Middle East than any of the war operations ever could. The only reason these extreme Islamists have power is that they protect their power hierarchies with strong rhetoric about traditional values, and a group of lies along that.
Cultural aggression is nonsense. By who? US Government? US Government trying to get Chinese people to play BF4? Really? That's like saying Japan is culturally attacking the West because people started watching anime in the Western world? Are you serious?
Spread of cultural things back and forth is the best thing ever for world peace. Obviously local people whose Ivory Towers are crumbling get annoyed by that. Just look at Middle East. Wonder why would you think local fundamentalists are trying to tell the story that watching Sex & Cit.. err Battlestar Galactica is a sin?
Sometimes it makes me think posts like above are paid by someone.
I don't like this polemic article which is basically telling good vs evil story. I don't own Bitcoin but I think it deserves a fairer treatment than this.
For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary... Less money chasing stuff; less cash for everybody to spend (as the supply of stuff out-grows the supply of money).
BtC maybe deflationary but so is the price of say PC components too. The real value of computers has declined exponentially since the 1970s yet the market is booming. Anyone knows that most PCs will sell a lot less next year than today yet people buy PC's. There's a great book called Less than Zero about this. I think bigger problems of deflation come around business cycles when wages don't adjust but deflation does not have to be the nightmare everyone is afraid of. In fact deflation is the whole purpose of economy, to get more stuff with less resources.
Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell (as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars). This essay has some questionable numbers, but the underlying principle is sound.
Lack of deeper abstract thinking. Carbon footprints are moral masturbation because anything you produce has carbon footprint, either in fixed or marginal costs. By trying to regulate the end products, the author falls to economic calculation problem. As long as the externalities of pollution are paid by those who produce them it doesn't really matter for which purpose the carbon is produced. Saying one product is preferable to another is just politics. You can redistribute money for whatever things (research, medicine etc.), but that's beside the point.
There're valid points about problems but I think it's quite one-sided article. The reality has much more dimensions to this. I can see both good and bad sides of having an anarchist crypto-currency, just like piracy. On other hand it prevents the big institutions from rent-seeking (in piracy, making things cost more than their marginal and fixed costs and with crypto-currency excessive taxation), on the other hand it comes with all the problems anarchy comes with.
I would switch on my upcoming desktop from Windows to Linux if all my games would work on it, and also some other things like Adobe tools. I'd much rather have Linux for work-related reasons than Windows on my desktop.
If Steam could get Linux Support for a lot of games, it could put Windows between rock and the hard place with gamers. They seem to be making this SteamOS to be something like playstation, but I hope they could also bring it to the desktop (even if it's a custom-installation). I hope the games they make, also support desktop-based Linux gaming. Playing straight console ports on PC is not worth it. I have no problem with consoles though, but they serve a different style of games.
Although if Apple started shipping some customizable Mac's without double the price of PC hardware (allow proper customization) and Mac supported bigger number of games, I would use Mac over either Linux or Windows on desktop. The perks of Mac just aren't good enough if I have to pay even 30% more for hardware, that is not very suitable for games (I don't need Xeon for gaming), when I can buy a decent PC and OC with 20% of the price tag. Maybe Apple has bad rep among gamers but I think they'd have low-hanging fruit if they started focusing on beating Windows on desktop without catering to some niche market of over-priced furniture buyers. Maybe the money is moving away from PC market but it still seems like a low-hanging fruit for me. Gaming on desktop is still on another level compared to other platforms (some of which are complementary rather than rivalry).
But the devil is in the details, and there's a lot of things that could fail which would make me switch back to Windows in an instant. Something as a simple as inability to turn v-sync off etc. would be major problems for me, but probably not for most of the gamers. Also I imagine any company could fail a lot of things when making an operating system (I'm waiting for C++-esque rant by Torvalds). I hope they bring the right people on board.
I don't know how many times this has been done, but in 2007 ago electrical engineers here in Oulu, Finland made the same thing, although with regular 7-storyish building. Here's the Finnish news.
People should read this which is written nobody but Paul Krugman himself, the intellectual leader of left-wing. Some of these economic fallacies are repeated here like fifteen times. It is like going to mainstream news and saying downloading is stealing. Sure, there're efficiency issues here but 5 second hunch isn't an educated opinion.
Moralizing about these factories is maybe signalling caring to others but it isn't helping. Increasing labor regulation is probably worst thing you could do. They have actually done some of that in Bangladesh, and people ended up in their next best alternative: dead due to lack of food or prostitution. Good intentions don't mean good results.
People who say we shouldn't buy these chinese products could do the worst damage. Living standards don't rise because of regulation, more than Moon orbits Earth because of law makers. The only reason is that all these commentators can get away with this cheap talk, is that they nothing on the line. If you actually had money on the line how to rise people's living standards, you would maybe pick up an economics textbook, or *gasp* remain silent.
Honestly, China's PPP-adjusted GDP per capita $7500 a litte above El Salvador. Scandinavia has something around 30-40k GDP per capita and little to none high-speed rail. Its a fiscal stimulus for jobs, and has probably quite little value outside it. Maybe in 30 years. I see it kind of funny to see this left-wing meme being repeated.
By investing in something (that's not a fraud) you're doing charity aswell. Nothing has increased our living standards as much as increase in productivity that only investment in better production can bring. Basic Adam Smith. Maybe investing in developing countries is marginally more "charitable". Basic charity, while it can provide temporary relief with high marginal benefit, usually does not have this effect (externalities are not simple but ahem).
Another thing you can do is just not use the money, which will increase the purchasing power of other people equally. There was an article on slate about this.
Put a dollar in the bank and you'll bid down the interest rate by just enough so someone somewhere can afford an extra dollar's worth of vacation or home improvement. Put a dollar in your mattress and (by effectively reducing the money supply) you'll drive down prices by just enough so someone somewhere can have an extra dollar's worth of coffee with his dinner. Scrooge, no doubt a canny investor, lent his money at interest. His less conventional namesake Scrooge McDuck filled a vault with dollar bills to roll around in. No matter. Ebenezer Scrooge lowered interest rates. Scrooge McDuck lowered prices. Each Scrooge enriched his neighbors as much as any Lord Mayor who invited the town in for a Christmas meal.
Investing or saving works, probably much better than charity, but of course it isn't as high social status as charity and you won't get the warm feeling of helping someone. But if you want to go with charity, give money the recipients weren't expecting (advice I got from one economist). Helping the poorest of the poor might be better than helping the poorest of Western country. Helping children and people who are in bad position of no fault of their own is probably better too. But other commenters have better opinions on different charities so I'll leave it at that.
Sure. How many companies are you going to pull out?:)
Also, find a stock broker, he can probably help you short these countries. Talk is cheap.
This antitrust legislation is probably quite inefficient and pointless. That I do agree with. Its not European invention though, such regulators are everywhere.
Because marginal cost of information is zero, competition from open source software can reduce social welfare in theory. This argument however has little to do with the argument of the Slashdot's article's British blogger, who probably should talk to some economists first. Generally creative destruction is good and efficient, but these things are a lot more complex than can be analyzed here (and not really my specialty).
I haven't used that so I have no idea if it works for lectures but on the concept it sounds interesting. I have heard people using for note-taking though.
Why are people posting articles with provoking headlines exaggerating the issue at hand? I understand this from tabloids but I would rather not have it in Slashdot. Nobody "killed" video games, its complete opposite, gaming industry is doing better than ever. When it becomes multi-billion business, lots of different kind of games show up. When web was invented, you didn't have many scam sites either. Don't visit them.
As an avid gamer, the unfortunate thing that has happened in video games has not much to do with greed. It has to do with facts that everyone's playing games nowadays. Hardcore games (like Q3, SC1) are not popular because they take effort to learn and consumers don't want to do that. Its not fault of the companies who make games. Same happened when music as art (classical) music's golden age ended. Maybe same will or has happened to Slashdot too as it will get more mainstream and all kinds provoking low-quality articles get posted.
Previously, I just responded to another post where someone blamed the "downhill of gaming" on DRM. Next article will probably blame it on climate change, who knows. Populism is annoying.
Property rights are useful when organizing economic activity because people respond to incentives. Efficiency is much more important than "freedom" or "openness". It is like computational efficiency: if you don't know what it exactly means (basically it means everyone gets more of what they want), then just listen to the experts. When Donald Knuth talks about algorithms, I shut up. The same thing with economic efficiency.
I've watched "gaming go downhill" and it has nothing to do with DRM. There're plenty of good games out there that are completely free. It has do with the fact the games are sold to a lot of people, and most people are there for quick fun and not something that took time and practice to be able to perform (like sports). Is this progression? Well its not necessarily fun for the hardcore gamers as they won't find any interesting games to play on (like me), but because of this more people can enjoy gaming. Same happened with music as art (classical) music's golden age ended, and pop / folk music became popular. Much of the commercial pop music does not (arguably) have the "depth" compared to art music but you cannot force people to listen to music they don't want or understand. Take Starcraft:BW for example, its arguably the deepest game out there, at least in RTS market. Maybe in 10-20 years it will be gone and replace by some simple game, and SC1:BW will be left as a practice of only handful of people. Would this be progression? I don't know, but the answer isn't simple. There'll be lots of gamers (with RL priorities) who don't want to spend a week just to play an enjoyable game, and I don't think we have should force them either.
The good thing about closed applications is that usually the market for applications is better, and integration is better and it gets usually the "work done" better. On the downside customizing can be difficult if not impossible. The good thing about open applications is that they are much more customizable, are generally cheaper, and work for all kinds of users, but can be expensive to maintain and get compatible. Its exactly like the question of how much there should be standards in *nix. Probably most agree POSIX was a step forward, but I think we could go further (lots of distributions do same things differently without achieving anything). Anyone who has tried to make inter-distributional applications for Linux knows that its a mess. I probably don't need to post the legendary ALSA jungle here. Generally speaking there's not a silver bullet here, different paradigms work for different people and organizations. You should be wary of people who claim otherwise. I posted a bunch of random ramblings for ideas to improve Linux here if anyone cares: http://bit.ly/oIxhBj
People who are not programmers or power users see software as as a tool, and what matters is how the tool works not the technical details. Nobody cares how their screwdrivers are done, but how it performs the tasks it is supposed to do. Maybe the screwdriver engineers wet their pants over different details of implementation, but at the end of the day we want a tools that work, not excuses.
This OSS ideology, which I think is rampant within OSS communities, is as bad as any other. It clouds the person's judgement with easy answers and prevent objective scientific (in this case; economic) analysis of the issue at hand. I've had it when I was younger, the sooner one gets rid of it, the better. Nobody likes DIY climate science either (ok some do, but I've nothing to say to them). To make sure you don't misunderstand me, I think open-source per se is great, just trying to force open-source everywhere is something that is not a question of personal opinion, but a question of how do we solve the coordination problems involved; to make sure everyone wins in the end. These are complicated questions, and for that we turn into experts, who usually need knowledge of different branches of science (mathematics, computer science, economics). The same go
Slashdot Mirror
On intellectual level I agree with this but not in the practice. There is certainly costs to everything but in this practice this means that some homosexuals get executed in name of "traditional values", people are not allowed to use Twitter in name of "keeping society peaceful" et cetera. Human societies consist of all kinds of groups competing with each other for status and resources, and usually a big web of shady beliefs are needed to keep those in power. Just look at the recent Snowden leaks.
But seriously though those (Indian tribes? Care to give real examples?) are extremely small costs compared to the world peace that Internet and spread of culture is pushing. Lack of communication between people leads to groups starting hostilities with each other. For example, I've met a lot of people from my neighboring country online that I would not otherwise. I think those relationships will help to promote peace between our countries more than any diplomats could. Similarly, I think Hollywood movies and tv-series will promote more peace in the Middle East than any of the war operations ever could. The only reason these extreme Islamists have power is that they protect their power hierarchies with strong rhetoric about traditional values, and a group of lies along that.
Cultural aggression is nonsense. By who? US Government? US Government trying to get Chinese people to play BF4? Really? That's like saying Japan is culturally attacking the West because people started watching anime in the Western world? Are you serious? Spread of cultural things back and forth is the best thing ever for world peace. Obviously local people whose Ivory Towers are crumbling get annoyed by that. Just look at Middle East. Wonder why would you think local fundamentalists are trying to tell the story that watching Sex & Cit.. err Battlestar Galactica is a sin? Sometimes it makes me think posts like above are paid by someone.
For starters, BtC is inherently deflationary ... Less money chasing stuff; less cash for everybody to spend (as the supply of stuff out-grows the supply of money).
BtC maybe deflationary but so is the price of say PC components too. The real value of computers has declined exponentially since the 1970s yet the market is booming. Anyone knows that most PCs will sell a lot less next year than today yet people buy PC's. There's a great book called Less than Zero about this. I think bigger problems of deflation come around business cycles when wages don't adjust but deflation does not have to be the nightmare everyone is afraid of. In fact deflation is the whole purpose of economy, to get more stuff with less resources.
Mining BtC has a carbon footprint from hell (as they get more computationally expensive to generate, electricity consumption soars). This essay has some questionable numbers, but the underlying principle is sound.
Lack of deeper abstract thinking. Carbon footprints are moral masturbation because anything you produce has carbon footprint, either in fixed or marginal costs. By trying to regulate the end products, the author falls to economic calculation problem. As long as the externalities of pollution are paid by those who produce them it doesn't really matter for which purpose the carbon is produced. Saying one product is preferable to another is just politics. You can redistribute money for whatever things (research, medicine etc.), but that's beside the point.
There're valid points about problems but I think it's quite one-sided article. The reality has much more dimensions to this. I can see both good and bad sides of having an anarchist crypto-currency, just like piracy. On other hand it prevents the big institutions from rent-seeking (in piracy, making things cost more than their marginal and fixed costs and with crypto-currency excessive taxation), on the other hand it comes with all the problems anarchy comes with.
I would switch on my upcoming desktop from Windows to Linux if all my games would work on it, and also some other things like Adobe tools. I'd much rather have Linux for work-related reasons than Windows on my desktop.
If Steam could get Linux Support for a lot of games, it could put Windows between rock and the hard place with gamers. They seem to be making this SteamOS to be something like playstation, but I hope they could also bring it to the desktop (even if it's a custom-installation). I hope the games they make, also support desktop-based Linux gaming. Playing straight console ports on PC is not worth it. I have no problem with consoles though, but they serve a different style of games.
Although if Apple started shipping some customizable Mac's without double the price of PC hardware (allow proper customization) and Mac supported bigger number of games, I would use Mac over either Linux or Windows on desktop. The perks of Mac just aren't good enough if I have to pay even 30% more for hardware, that is not very suitable for games (I don't need Xeon for gaming), when I can buy a decent PC and OC with 20% of the price tag. Maybe Apple has bad rep among gamers but I think they'd have low-hanging fruit if they started focusing on beating Windows on desktop without catering to some niche market of over-priced furniture buyers. Maybe the money is moving away from PC market but it still seems like a low-hanging fruit for me. Gaming on desktop is still on another level compared to other platforms (some of which are complementary rather than rivalry).
But the devil is in the details, and there's a lot of things that could fail which would make me switch back to Windows in an instant. Something as a simple as inability to turn v-sync off etc. would be major problems for me, but probably not for most of the gamers. Also I imagine any company could fail a lot of things when making an operating system (I'm waiting for C++-esque rant by Torvalds). I hope they bring the right people on board.
I don't know how many times this has been done, but in 2007 ago electrical engineers here in Oulu, Finland made the same thing, although with regular 7-storyish building. Here's the Finnish news.
Without accountability.
People should read this which is written nobody but Paul Krugman himself, the intellectual leader of left-wing. Some of these economic fallacies are repeated here like fifteen times. It is like going to mainstream news and saying downloading is stealing. Sure, there're efficiency issues here but 5 second hunch isn't an educated opinion.
Moralizing about these factories is maybe signalling caring to others but it isn't helping. Increasing labor regulation is probably worst thing you could do. They have actually done some of that in Bangladesh, and people ended up in their next best alternative: dead due to lack of food or prostitution. Good intentions don't mean good results.
People who say we shouldn't buy these chinese products could do the worst damage. Living standards don't rise because of regulation, more than Moon orbits Earth because of law makers. The only reason is that all these commentators can get away with this cheap talk, is that they nothing on the line. If you actually had money on the line how to rise people's living standards, you would maybe pick up an economics textbook, or *gasp* remain silent.
Honestly, China's PPP-adjusted GDP per capita $7500 a litte above El Salvador. Scandinavia has something around 30-40k GDP per capita and little to none high-speed rail. Its a fiscal stimulus for jobs, and has probably quite little value outside it. Maybe in 30 years. I see it kind of funny to see this left-wing meme being repeated.
By investing in something (that's not a fraud) you're doing charity aswell. Nothing has increased our living standards as much as increase in productivity that only investment in better production can bring. Basic Adam Smith. Maybe investing in developing countries is marginally more "charitable". Basic charity, while it can provide temporary relief with high marginal benefit, usually does not have this effect (externalities are not simple but ahem).
Another thing you can do is just not use the money, which will increase the purchasing power of other people equally. There was an article on slate about this.
Investing or saving works, probably much better than charity, but of course it isn't as high social status as charity and you won't get the warm feeling of helping someone. But if you want to go with charity, give money the recipients weren't expecting (advice I got from one economist). Helping the poorest of the poor might be better than helping the poorest of Western country. Helping children and people who are in bad position of no fault of their own is probably better too. But other commenters have better opinions on different charities so I'll leave it at that.
Sure. How many companies are you going to pull out? :)
Also, find a stock broker, he can probably help you short these countries. Talk is cheap.
This antitrust legislation is probably quite inefficient and pointless. That I do agree with. Its not European invention though, such regulators are everywhere.
Some clever programmer could outsource it, pay the hacker, and take the job. :)
Because marginal cost of information is zero, competition from open source software can reduce social welfare in theory. This argument however has little to do with the argument of the Slashdot's article's British blogger, who probably should talk to some economists first. Generally creative destruction is good and efficient, but these things are a lot more complex than can be analyzed here (and not really my specialty).
"Impact of Competition from Open Source Software on Proprietary Software"
Vidyanand Choudhary and Zach Z. Zhou
http://www.citi.uconn.edu/cist07/2a.pdf
Maybe consider Inkling by Wacom?
http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Inkling.aspx
http://youtu.be/fXbBA1DRE84
I haven't used that so I have no idea if it works for lectures but on the concept it sounds interesting. I have heard people using for note-taking though.
So, how do I overclock this?
Yep, I second this. Tomato is a good piece of firmware. Easy to install, stable to use and has plenty of features.
Why are people posting articles with provoking headlines exaggerating the issue at hand? I understand this from tabloids but I would rather not have it in Slashdot. Nobody "killed" video games, its complete opposite, gaming industry is doing better than ever. When it becomes multi-billion business, lots of different kind of games show up. When web was invented, you didn't have many scam sites either. Don't visit them.
As an avid gamer, the unfortunate thing that has happened in video games has not much to do with greed. It has to do with facts that everyone's playing games nowadays. Hardcore games (like Q3, SC1) are not popular because they take effort to learn and consumers don't want to do that. Its not fault of the companies who make games. Same happened when music as art (classical) music's golden age ended. Maybe same will or has happened to Slashdot too as it will get more mainstream and all kinds provoking low-quality articles get posted.
Previously, I just responded to another post where someone blamed the "downhill of gaming" on DRM. Next article will probably blame it on climate change, who knows. Populism is annoying.
Property rights are useful when organizing economic activity because people respond to incentives. Efficiency is much more important than "freedom" or "openness". It is like computational efficiency: if you don't know what it exactly means (basically it means everyone gets more of what they want), then just listen to the experts. When Donald Knuth talks about algorithms, I shut up. The same thing with economic efficiency.
I've watched "gaming go downhill" and it has nothing to do with DRM. There're plenty of good games out there that are completely free. It has do with the fact the games are sold to a lot of people, and most people are there for quick fun and not something that took time and practice to be able to perform (like sports). Is this progression? Well its not necessarily fun for the hardcore gamers as they won't find any interesting games to play on (like me), but because of this more people can enjoy gaming. Same happened with music as art (classical) music's golden age ended, and pop / folk music became popular. Much of the commercial pop music does not (arguably) have the "depth" compared to art music but you cannot force people to listen to music they don't want or understand. Take Starcraft:BW for example, its arguably the deepest game out there, at least in RTS market. Maybe in 10-20 years it will be gone and replace by some simple game, and SC1:BW will be left as a practice of only handful of people. Would this be progression? I don't know, but the answer isn't simple. There'll be lots of gamers (with RL priorities) who don't want to spend a week just to play an enjoyable game, and I don't think we have should force them either.
The good thing about closed applications is that usually the market for applications is better, and integration is better and it gets usually the "work done" better. On the downside customizing can be difficult if not impossible. The good thing about open applications is that they are much more customizable, are generally cheaper, and work for all kinds of users, but can be expensive to maintain and get compatible. Its exactly like the question of how much there should be standards in *nix. Probably most agree POSIX was a step forward, but I think we could go further (lots of distributions do same things differently without achieving anything). Anyone who has tried to make inter-distributional applications for Linux knows that its a mess. I probably don't need to post the legendary ALSA jungle here. Generally speaking there's not a silver bullet here, different paradigms work for different people and organizations. You should be wary of people who claim otherwise. I posted a bunch of random ramblings for ideas to improve Linux here if anyone cares: http://bit.ly/oIxhBj
People who are not programmers or power users see software as as a tool, and what matters is how the tool works not the technical details. Nobody cares how their screwdrivers are done, but how it performs the tasks it is supposed to do. Maybe the screwdriver engineers wet their pants over different details of implementation, but at the end of the day we want a tools that work, not excuses.
This OSS ideology, which I think is rampant within OSS communities, is as bad as any other. It clouds the person's judgement with easy answers and prevent objective scientific (in this case; economic) analysis of the issue at hand. I've had it when I was younger, the sooner one gets rid of it, the better. Nobody likes DIY climate science either (ok some do, but I've nothing to say to them). To make sure you don't misunderstand me, I think open-source per se is great, just trying to force open-source everywhere is something that is not a question of personal opinion, but a question of how do we solve the coordination problems involved; to make sure everyone wins in the end. These are complicated questions, and for that we turn into experts, who usually need knowledge of different branches of science (mathematics, computer science, economics). The same go
Don't worry guys, the nukes are safe. For now.
Can we play NetHack on it?