According to bitcoinexchangerate.org right now, a bitcoin is trading for $496, that means that Mt.Gox is reporting a theft of $369 million.
That's a lot of money.
Did the Mt Gox admins ever consider that, say, locking your door is not a sufficient precaution when you have $369 million under your bed? That your default install of Linux Mint might not be a sufficient precaution against hackers when you have $369 million on your hard drive?
But why should they have cared? It wasn't their money that was stolen. The theft was an externality. And if there's something we know about free markets, they are great EXCEPT when they involve externalities.
Most of those states are either isolated islands or European city-states. Both are under the effective protection of countries with militaries - either major sea powers like the US, or large European states like Italy.
The only states not in those categories are Costa Rica, Panama, and Haiti. Each of these countries is relatively isolated (no more than one border with a country that has a military), without oil or other resources to fight over, and to some extent under the shadow of the US military.
So this is not really a model that most countries can follow.
Islam is a religion not a race. Hence the term Muslim, which means a follower of Islam, is not a racial term.
It's not quite that simple in practice. In Lebanon the main communities are Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Druze. Each community includes many non-religious people and some who would describe themselves as atheists. But if you were born into the Sunni community, then your family is Sunni, the militia defending you is Sunni, and the militias attacking you are probably Shiite or Christian. That's your identity, regardless what you think about theological issues. It may not be a "race", but it's certainly an ethnicity. Not just a belief or point of view.
But why limit it to modern technology? Is a knight a human-armor-horse hybrid? Is a caveman a human-spear hybrid? I can't imagine how describing things this way leads to a deeper level of understanding.
Remember when Apple was the company that came out with revolutionary new products and the rest of the industry followed them?
Apparently, now it's Google.
(Oh, and who would trust Steve Jobs' company to make their medical devices? Yes I am speaking both to his general approach to ethics, and the circumstances of his death.)
The course we are on is unsustainable at our current rate of energy consumption. Tom Murphy's excellent essay "Galactic-Scale Energy" made the case rather well (and it deserves its own Slashdot entry if it hasn't already had one -- I'm too lazy too look it up). About 1400 years from now (which is less time into the future than we are from the fall of the Roman Empire) we will be using more energy than is currently produced by the entirety of the sun if we don't back off on the growth of our energy consumption, which is showing no signs of easing up.
This is completely false. US energy consumption per capital has actually fallen in recent years, and is currently no higher per capita than it was in 1970. Other developed countries have a similar trend.
Or better yet, write down PART of each password you use in your wallet. And memorize the rest of the password (it can be as little as a couple letters, the same couple letters for each site). That way, you only have to remember a couple letters once (and never change them), and get security from the complicated part of the password which is written down.
Cuba is a totalitarian police state. The problem is not too little infrastructure, it's too much oppression. And I don't see how an initiative like this could change the situation.
Let comments be edited for 24 hours or until the first reply to them is posted, whichever comes first. Store just the original version and the latest version. Show the latest version, plus a "See earlier version" link/button when applicable.
I've met too many women who were good at science growing up. And were strongly encourage to work in STEM. And once they started working, they realized that they HATED it. Not enough interaction with people, mostly. So they ended up switching to careers like teaching or physical therapy.
I think people should be encourage to enter whatever career THEY prefer. Not whatever career best furthers someone's vision for restructuring society.
The UK is a basket case, it treats the arts in higher esteem than the sciences and engineering (unlike countries like Germany). The general public in the UK don't like people who takes sciences (how popular are science nerds/geeks compared to jocks in school?)
And yet, the UK still has two of the 10 most highly regarded universities in the world - the only country other than the US to break the top 10. Germany's first entry is at #50. http://www.shanghairanking.com... (To be fair, I avoided rankings that seemed to be published by UK-connected institutions)
I'm sure the UK's popular culture is not pro-science, but isn't that true everywhere? And does that even matter when a disproportionate amount of R&D is being produced?
Technically, free market principles are upheld no matter - no matter what restrictions you create, supply and demand will end up equalizing, since every transaction has a buyer and a seller, and nobody is forced at gunpoint to buy/sell their labor or property.
But some restrictions lead to more defensible outcomes than others.
Limiting immigration because you feel a responsibility to your country's citizens above another country's, and do not want wages in your country to stabilize at a level near that of a third world country, is agreed by most to be an acceptable motivation. (Though one can easily see the opposing argument.)
In contrast, training extra engineers because "otherwise, supply and demand will not equalize" is a policy based on a blatant lie, motivated by employers' desire for higher salaries at the expense of their workers. It's hard to find any good argument for that.
It's very touching that you believe that the invisible hand is going to make everything better, but the reality is that any correction in engineering salaries is likely to take decades (if not longer), and the shortage of STEM graduates is rather more immediate.
Why on earth would a salary correction take decades? If hiring an engineer will allow the company to release a (let's say) $1 million product, and there is a shortage of engineers willing to work for $50k, then it's worth it for the company to raise its offer to $60k or $70k, or even $200k. At some salary point, there will be qualified engineers willing to bite. Why should a company wait decades before making such an offer? And once they do, how could their competitors hold on to their employees without making similar offers?
So build surface transit. Many European cities have large networks of surface light rail (trams) which can transport several times as many people as a bus, and dozens of times as many people as a car. (Zurich, for instance, has over half the population of Rome and NO subways, and is commonly regarded as the world's best city for public transportation, because of its trams.) But Rome has only a handful of tram lines, none of which really penetrate into the central city. Meanwhile there are many multi-lane roads for cars in that central city. Why?
The next step is to anticipate disasters (when possible - hurricanes yes, earthquakes no) and begin the mapping effort even before the disaster arrives...
1. One reason oil and coal appear to be cheaper is that the costs of CO2 emissions are completely externalized. Introduce a cap-and-trade system or a CO2 tax and suddenly those won't look quite as economically attractive. (Obviously, you'll have to ignore this point if you think that there are no costs of CO2 emissions, as some do.)
I looked online for estimates of the CO2 externality cost per gallon of gas. Estimates I found ranged from 6 to 29 cents per gallon - quite insignificant.
The total externality per gallon came out to about $1.50 per gallon. (Most of that is due to congestion, traffic accidents, and local pollution.) Raising the gas price by that amount would have a quite noticeable, but not revolutionary, economic impact.
Self-driving cars are cheaper, sure, by the cost of a taxi driver, but that's not that big a savings, really.
That's an IMMENSE savings. In a city bus, the largest expense, by far is the driver's salary. That's for a giant vehicle that carries dozens of people. For a taxi car, with much lower gas and maintenance expenses, the percentage will of course be even higher.
Gmail had 425 million users in mid-2012 (according to Wikipedia). Probably more now. If only one in a million people are stupid enough to do something each hour, it will still occur hundreds of times per hour.
Slashdot Mirror
US invaded Iraq, tried to reform the government, and eventually left.
Russia invaded Crimea, and may soon attempt to annex it.
That's a big difference, legally and morally.
It's like the difference between hunter2 and hunter2.
According to bitcoinexchangerate.org right now, a bitcoin is trading for $496, that means that Mt.Gox is reporting a theft of $369 million.
That's a lot of money.
Did the Mt Gox admins ever consider that, say, locking your door is not a sufficient precaution when you have $369 million under your bed? That your default install of Linux Mint might not be a sufficient precaution against hackers when you have $369 million on your hard drive?
But why should they have cared? It wasn't their money that was stolen. The theft was an externality. And if there's something we know about free markets, they are great EXCEPT when they involve externalities.
Most of those states are either isolated islands or European city-states. Both are under the effective protection of countries with militaries - either major sea powers like the US, or large European states like Italy.
The only states not in those categories are Costa Rica, Panama, and Haiti. Each of these countries is relatively isolated (no more than one border with a country that has a military), without oil or other resources to fight over, and to some extent under the shadow of the US military.
So this is not really a model that most countries can follow.
Islam is a religion not a race. Hence the term Muslim, which means a follower of Islam, is not a racial term.
It's not quite that simple in practice. In Lebanon the main communities are Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Druze. Each community includes many non-religious people and some who would describe themselves as atheists. But if you were born into the Sunni community, then your family is Sunni, the militia defending you is Sunni, and the militias attacking you are probably Shiite or Christian. That's your identity, regardless what you think about theological issues. It may not be a "race", but it's certainly an ethnicity. Not just a belief or point of view.
But why limit it to modern technology? Is a knight a human-armor-horse hybrid? Is a caveman a human-spear hybrid? I can't imagine how describing things this way leads to a deeper level of understanding.
Remember when Apple was the company that came out with revolutionary new products and the rest of the industry followed them?
Apparently, now it's Google.
(Oh, and who would trust Steve Jobs' company to make their medical devices? Yes I am speaking both to his general approach to ethics, and the circumstances of his death.)
The course we are on is unsustainable at our current rate of energy consumption. Tom Murphy's excellent essay "Galactic-Scale Energy" made the case rather well (and it deserves its own Slashdot entry if it hasn't already had one -- I'm too lazy too look it up). About 1400 years from now (which is less time into the future than we are from the fall of the Roman Empire) we will be using more energy than is currently produced by the entirety of the sun if we don't back off on the growth of our energy consumption, which is showing no signs of easing up.
This is completely false. US energy consumption per capital has actually fallen in recent years, and is currently no higher per capita than it was in 1970. Other developed countries have a similar trend.
Or better yet, write down PART of each password you use in your wallet. And memorize the rest of the password (it can be as little as a couple letters, the same couple letters for each site). That way, you only have to remember a couple letters once (and never change them), and get security from the complicated part of the password which is written down.
Cuba is a totalitarian police state. The problem is not too little infrastructure, it's too much oppression. And I don't see how an initiative like this could change the situation.
Same here.
Let comments be edited for 24 hours or until the first reply to them is posted, whichever comes first. Store just the original version and the latest version. Show the latest version, plus a "See earlier version" link/button when applicable.
I've met too many women who were good at science growing up. And were strongly encourage to work in STEM. And once they started working, they realized that they HATED it. Not enough interaction with people, mostly. So they ended up switching to careers like teaching or physical therapy.
I think people should be encourage to enter whatever career THEY prefer. Not whatever career best furthers someone's vision for restructuring society.
This is all based on GPS? Is the accuracy of GPS sufficient for this? Especially in urban areas where the view is obstructed by buildings?
The UK is a basket case, it treats the arts in higher esteem than the sciences and engineering (unlike countries like Germany). The general public in the UK don't like people who takes sciences (how popular are science nerds/geeks compared to jocks in school?)
And yet, the UK still has two of the 10 most highly regarded universities in the world - the only country other than the US to break the top 10. Germany's first entry is at #50.
http://www.shanghairanking.com... (To be fair, I avoided rankings that seemed to be published by UK-connected institutions)
I'm sure the UK's popular culture is not pro-science, but isn't that true everywhere? And does that even matter when a disproportionate amount of R&D is being produced?
Technically, free market principles are upheld no matter - no matter what restrictions you create, supply and demand will end up equalizing, since every transaction has a buyer and a seller, and nobody is forced at gunpoint to buy/sell their labor or property.
But some restrictions lead to more defensible outcomes than others.
Limiting immigration because you feel a responsibility to your country's citizens above another country's, and do not want wages in your country to stabilize at a level near that of a third world country, is agreed by most to be an acceptable motivation. (Though one can easily see the opposing argument.)
In contrast, training extra engineers because "otherwise, supply and demand will not equalize" is a policy based on a blatant lie, motivated by employers' desire for higher salaries at the expense of their workers. It's hard to find any good argument for that.
It's very touching that you believe that the invisible hand is going to make everything better, but the reality is that any correction in engineering salaries is likely to take decades (if not longer), and the shortage of STEM graduates is rather more immediate.
Why on earth would a salary correction take decades? If hiring an engineer will allow the company to release a (let's say) $1 million product, and there is a shortage of engineers willing to work for $50k, then it's worth it for the company to raise its offer to $60k or $70k, or even $200k. At some salary point, there will be qualified engineers willing to bite. Why should a company wait decades before making such an offer? And once they do, how could their competitors hold on to their employees without making similar offers?
...so we need to fund education for students who won't hit the job market until several years later?
Give me a break.
And trust the free market for once. If there's a worker shortage, then wages will rise until demand and supply equalize and there is no more shortage.
All the whining about a shortage of engineers is simply a trick by employers to increase supply and decrease the wages they have to pay.
So build surface transit. Many European cities have large networks of surface light rail (trams) which can transport several times as many people as a bus, and dozens of times as many people as a car. (Zurich, for instance, has over half the population of Rome and NO subways, and is commonly regarded as the world's best city for public transportation, because of its trams.) But Rome has only a handful of tram lines, none of which really penetrate into the central city. Meanwhile there are many multi-lane roads for cars in that central city. Why?
The next step is to anticipate disasters (when possible - hurricanes yes, earthquakes no) and begin the mapping effort even before the disaster arrives...
1. One reason oil and coal appear to be cheaper is that the costs of CO2 emissions are completely externalized. Introduce a cap-and-trade system or a CO2 tax and suddenly those won't look quite as economically attractive. (Obviously, you'll have to ignore this point if you think that there are no costs of CO2 emissions, as some do.)
I looked online for estimates of the CO2 externality cost per gallon of gas. Estimates I found ranged from 6 to 29 cents per gallon - quite insignificant.
The total externality per gallon came out to about $1.50 per gallon. (Most of that is due to congestion, traffic accidents, and local pollution.) Raising the gas price by that amount would have a quite noticeable, but not revolutionary, economic impact.
http://www.becker-posner-blog....
http://www.economics.neu.edu/e...
Self-driving cars are cheaper, sure, by the cost of a taxi driver, but that's not that big a savings, really.
That's an IMMENSE savings. In a city bus, the largest expense, by far is the driver's salary. That's for a giant vehicle that carries dozens of people. For a taxi car, with much lower gas and maintenance expenses, the percentage will of course be even higher.
Gmail had 425 million users in mid-2012 (according to Wikipedia). Probably more now. If only one in a million people are stupid enough to do something each hour, it will still occur hundreds of times per hour.
I had a sudden desire to open a compose window and see the guy's address in it.
But no sudden desire to press "send".
More likely that Google would build an office in SF (raising land prices even higher). Some tech companies have done that already.