The idea behind competitive electrical markets is that there can be lots of producers plugged into the grid, all of whom compete to sell you electricity, so it would be a competitive oligopoly. If that is not possible, then deregulation makes little sense.
The government does not provide water and police services because people 'need' them. If that were the rationale, then wouldn't we want the government controlling all farms (because people need food) and drug production (which many people need to live). The reason we have the government provide police service is because it is a public good, so it cannot be effectively provided privately. The reason we have regulated monopolies provide water service is because that market is a natural monopoly.
The idea behind electricity deregulation is the improved technology allows electricity to be structured as a competitive industry and not a monopoly. It has largely succeeded based on the ability to structure the new electricity market in such a way the competitive providers actually enter. Governments have been largely inept at structuring these markets, which is why the results have been mixed. It sounds like this didn't happen in Alberta, which is too bad. But we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the government needs to provide everything we think we 'need'.
The claim has often been made that TeX is bug free. I heard somewhere that the cash reward for a new bug has kept doubling for the past ten years, but no one has found one.
I might agree with that for a painting of a book. But a film is clearly not the product of a single artist, so there is no individual to give 'intent' to. A director is important, possibly the most important person on the set. But he or she is not the lone artist.
Who gives Scott the right to tell us what was happening in the film? The book Future Noir reveals that there was disagreement among the actors and writers about whether Deckard was a replicant. It has been suggested that Scott came up with the idea by misreading the screenplay, and that others were not aware of it. A film is a collaboration of many people's ideas. To give Scott the right to tell us what the film means would be accepting the most extreme extension of the auteur theory of filmmaking: the notion that the director of a film is the sole creative force behind it, and has a stranglehold on its meaning. And that flies in the face of how films are made and enjoyed.
Sure, but the tree is the easy case. What happens when you have two structure types (structA and structB), such that structA contains a structB and structB contains a structA.
Just wait for the cardinal shortage
on
Netscape 6
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· Score: 5
Mathematicians now suggest that the set of cardinal numbers, once thought to be a limitless resourece, is running dry. At the rate we are currently consuming, human beings could be out of cardinal numbers by mid-2003.
Soon Word 3 and Netscape 5 and IPv5 will all be reclaimed, as part of a national cardinal-recycling program.
Do you need brand recognition to sell a chip? Sure, Intel spends millions co-branding advertising, but that does not keep AMD out of the market. Furthermore, Transmeta is selling chips to notebook computer and embedded system users. Do those users buy a brand of chip or a brand of computer?
I think that like many things, geeks are the ones who will drool over Crusoe's technology, and general consumers will tune into compelling products using the technology. Your mom does not need to marvel at MPEG2 compression to enjoy here DVDs.
With the exception of this Beam-it thing, which seems quite simple, MP3.com is not using any proprietary software, and they do not have any special hold on the content. If they win the lawsuit, there is nothing to keep anyone else from doing what MP3.com is doing. The only reason MP3.com would be doing this is if they believe that they can provide a competitive audio streaming service. If they don't, someone else will.
But all I was stating was that the cardinality of R is greater than that of N, which is proved at the beginning of most analysis books. I am rather fond of the decimal expansion proof.
If you have not seen this proof before, I recommend looking it up. It is quite elegant and the techniques are not very complex, even though the implications are astounding.
The interesting thing about transendental numbers is that there are a lot more of them than there are algebraic numbers. (For those unfamiliar with infinite cardinality, this is about as bizzare as it sounds. There are an infinite number of both transendental and algebraic numbers, the algebraic numbers are just more infinite.)
It is easy to demonstrate that the cardinality of the algebraic numbers is equivilant to that of the integers, so the cardinality of the transendental numbers is equivilant to that of the continuum. However, it is also not to hard to prove that the cardinality of all numbers describable in a finite language is equivilant to that of the integers. This includes not only every number that every human has thought of and every number that every computer has computed, but every number that any human or computer might ever consider. So for cryptographic purposes, the existance of a lot of transendental numbers is useless, beceause no human or computer will ever access them.
The fact that our theories about real number lead us to believe that numbers exist that we cannot access has troubled a lot of people. Weil rejected the class of number unaccessble to humans. Cantor thought that as he theorized about bigger and bigger infinite sets he was learning to understand God.
You are right, the difficulty is that the manner in which people pay for bandwidth makes it difficult to account for the cost of a particular use. But I am sure a creative web hosting operation could come up with an equitable model, in which they would not charge the site author (except possibly for storage), and each download would have a small bandwidth-based fee attached to it. This seems to be the closest analog to paying for postage.
This is basically the scheme that was suppose to underlie the micropayments boom on the internet a few years ago. It failed to take off, because consumers were uninterested in paying for content. But in a situations like the one we are discussing, where you have a captive fan base and no other option for financing, maybe bandwidth-based micropayments are the way to go.
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The idea behind competitive electrical markets is that there can be lots of producers plugged into the grid, all of whom compete to sell you electricity, so it would be a competitive oligopoly. If that is not possible, then deregulation makes little sense.
The idea behind electricity deregulation is the improved technology allows electricity to be structured as a competitive industry and not a monopoly. It has largely succeeded based on the ability to structure the new electricity market in such a way the competitive providers actually enter. Governments have been largely inept at structuring these markets, which is why the results have been mixed. It sounds like this didn't happen in Alberta, which is too bad. But we shouldn't jump to the conclusion that the government needs to provide everything we think we 'need'.
A rare case, but a famous one.
I might agree with that for a painting of a book. But a film is clearly not the product of a single artist, so there is no individual to give 'intent' to. A director is important, possibly the most important person on the set. But he or she is not the lone artist.
Who gives Scott the right to tell us what was happening in the film? The book Future Noir reveals that there was disagreement among the actors and writers about whether Deckard was a replicant. It has been suggested that Scott came up with the idea by misreading the screenplay, and that others were not aware of it. A film is a collaboration of many people's ideas. To give Scott the right to tell us what the film means would be accepting the most extreme extension of the auteur theory of filmmaking: the notion that the director of a film is the sole creative force behind it, and has a stranglehold on its meaning. And that flies in the face of how films are made and enjoyed.
Of course you are right. I have been spending too much time playing in Java.
Sure, but the tree is the easy case. What happens when you have two structure types (structA and structB), such that structA contains a structB and structB contains a structA.
Soon Word 3 and Netscape 5 and IPv5 will all be reclaimed, as part of a national cardinal-recycling program.
I think that like many things, geeks are the ones who will drool over Crusoe's technology, and general consumers will tune into compelling products using the technology. Your mom does not need to marvel at MPEG2 compression to enjoy here DVDs.
audioramp
With the exception of this Beam-it thing, which seems quite simple, MP3.com is not using any proprietary software, and they do not have any special hold on the content. If they win the lawsuit, there is nothing to keep anyone else from doing what MP3.com is doing. The only reason MP3.com would be doing this is if they believe that they can provide a competitive audio streaming service. If they don't, someone else will.
Seems pretty open to me.
If you have not seen this proof before, I recommend looking it up. It is quite elegant and the techniques are not very complex, even though the implications are astounding.
It is easy to demonstrate that the cardinality of the algebraic numbers is equivilant to that of the integers, so the cardinality of the transendental numbers is equivilant to that of the continuum. However, it is also not to hard to prove that the cardinality of all numbers describable in a finite language is equivilant to that of the integers. This includes not only every number that every human has thought of and every number that every computer has computed, but every number that any human or computer might ever consider. So for cryptographic purposes, the existance of a lot of transendental numbers is useless, beceause no human or computer will ever access them.
The fact that our theories about real number lead us to believe that numbers exist that we cannot access has troubled a lot of people. Weil rejected the class of number unaccessble to humans. Cantor thought that as he theorized about bigger and bigger infinite sets he was learning to understand God.
You are right, the difficulty is that the manner in which people pay for bandwidth makes it difficult to account for the cost of a particular use. But I am sure a creative web hosting operation could come up with an equitable model, in which they would not charge the site author (except possibly for storage), and each download would have a small bandwidth-based fee attached to it. This seems to be the closest analog to paying for postage.
This is basically the scheme that was suppose to underlie the micropayments boom on the internet a few years ago. It failed to take off, because consumers were uninterested in paying for content. But in a situations like the one we are discussing, where you have a captive fan base and no other option for financing, maybe bandwidth-based micropayments are the way to go.