It is a fiat currency. It has no inherent value.Exactly right.The paper bill is simply a physical container for a fractional unit of confidence in the US government, nothing more or less.This is a bit off target --- my belief in the value of U.S. currency has less to do with faith in the U.S. goverment than with my belief that other people will be willing to exchange goods for U.S. currency in the future. The only requirement for people be willing to hold a fiat currency is the belief that it can be exchanged for something else in the future. Where confidence in the U.S. government matters is in establishing price stability --- believing that the government will not dramatically increase the money supply in the future, creating inflation and lowering the value of the cash I am holding.
Re:The ./ obsession with a cashless society?
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I don't where slashdot gets the obsession, but a lot of the hype about e-money and a "cashless society" comes from financial institutions desire to be in the business of "creating alternative currency." When you put money in a bank, the bank loans it out to other people at interest. (This, of course, is how & why the bank pays you interest to deposit money.) Many ideas for e-money basically ask you to deposit money in a bank or somewhere else (though it goes under the label of "putting money on the card") with zero interest. The French cards discussed earler today were like that, they get your cash now, you get to spend the money later. Traveller's checks are like that also --- most of the revenue comes from interest American Express collects between in the time elapsed between when the checks are bought and when they are spent. (At least traveller's checks provide some insurance --- few money cards do.) Of course, a traveller's check issuer will not typically loan the money out themselves, they will invest in financial instruments that derive their ultimate value from loans or direct investment.
I'm not sure what the banking requirements for e-money schemes would be like, but banks are only required to keep a small fraction of deposits in reserve. If that applied to e-money as well it would expand the investment options for the money collected by e-money firms.
Of course, consumers understand this logic perfectly well --- why should I pay for the privilege of spending my own money? why not just use a debit card and cut out the intermediate steps? That's one reason why these ideas have been floating around since the 1980's without really catching on.
My point: a lot of hype about a "cashless society" is coming from firms with an interest in replacing the current system with one in which they effectively "issue currency" and make money off of the float, as well as from percentage based and flat fees. They don't mean "cashless"--they mean "use our cash instead of theirs."
arrrggh, I never thought it would come to this, but...
1) issue alternative currency 2) ???? 3) Profit!
except that in this case ????? = collect interest.
The jackals are one of the projects of the tangentlab artist collective -- they scavenge and hack their way through technological detritus:
There have always been jackals, there always will be jackals. We are the ones who put your tech to use, the ones who recycle the glut and make it useful in aesthetic glory. The technology is neither servant nor master, but merely our raw material, to gnaw, rework, shape and build.
They also have awesome techno-jackal masks that use the same elements as the critters from the original post. The jackals were most recently seen lurking under a bridge as SIGGRAPH 2002. I have pictures from the jackal invasion of the MCA in Chicago last April here.
"Work" turns out to be a surprisingly vague concept, even for people in traditional factory jobs. One of the most successful, and hardest to organize and implement, industrial actions is "work-to-rule", where each worker follows every rule to the letter and refuses to do things that are not specifically "their job." This type of action lowers productivity dramatically, emphasizing that workplaces depend critically on voluntary cooperation.
The economist George Akerlof modeled the cooperative aspects of the labor market formally in a paper called "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange"
( Quarterly Journal of EconomicsVol. 97, No. 4, pp. 543-569).
I find the view that reading/. or making phone calls at work is "stealing" to be naive and simplistic --- so much depends on subtle (or not so subtle) levels of effort that cannot be measured or coerced. The poster's comments that "two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave." illustrate this perfectly.
Okay, this is a bit offtopic, but I've been scanning the comments on various stories about the Slammer virus and have noticed that, according to many many posters, security patches can introduce new bugs in the software that cause it to behave erratically.
My offtopic question is: why doesn't this happen with Linux ? (or does it happen with Linux?)
I don't use Linux and I'm not a bonafide geek (I've never had 'root' access, which seems to be one of the key requirements --- that may change now that I use Mac OS X), and I've always wondered why using fixes, new functions, patches, whatever, written by numerous different people hasn't turned Linux or other open source into a non-functioning morass of code. I read Eric Raymond's The Cathedral & the Bazaar but I didn't really feel like he answered the question, other than refering to the gospel of Linus "with enough eyes, any bug is shallow."
Isn't an operating system more complicated (or at least more fundamental) than an application? Why doesn't (or how often) does fixing one bug in Linux create two new ones?
It's not about the death of seven people. It's about our collective desire for exploration, for understanding and appreciating the vast vast universe that we inhabit. It's about attempting something that is larger than any one or any seven individuals, and watching as it literally disintegrate. Space travel should and can represent a common aspiration to explore space in peace and for the benefit of humankind. I know that the space program hasn't always fulfilled these aspirations, but it's our best effort so far.
I, for one, felt a deep heavy sadness when I saw the news this morning, far beyond the deaths of seven human beings. Space flight is dangerous, and astronauts are brave and dedicated --- I think it's reasonable to feel differently about a group of people that die trying to achieve a worthy and inspiring goal than about the same number of people, or even the exact same people, dying accidentally.
PS: words by Lee Hays, music by Pete Seeger, complete version of lyrics (I left a few lines out, and it's Lee not Pete in the last line) at the bottom of this page on Country Joe's website.
a little ditty that pete seeger (I think) used to sing:
if I should die before I wake
all my bones and sinew take
put them in the compost pile
to decompose there for a while
when corn or radishes you munch
you may be having me for lunch
then excrete me with a grin
chortling 'there goes pete again!'
alternate definitions
on
A Word a Day
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Why stick to the official definitions? Here are some alternates from an old Washington Post contest:
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. Carcinoma (n.), a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightie. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash. Bustard (n.), a very rude Metrobus driver. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon. Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are
run over by a steamroller. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam. Semantics (n.), pranks conducted by young men studying for the
priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's
prayer book together just before vespers. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a
proctologist immediately before he examines you. Marionettes (n.), residents of Washington who have been jerked around
by the mayor. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish
expressions. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts. Frisbatarianism (n.), Belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on
the roof and gets stuck.
With XDarwin and OroborOSX it's about as perfectly integrated as it can get
If this is as good at it gets I'm in deep trouble. One of the synergies between Mac OS X and Linux is that Matlab is available for the Mac again, after Mathworks had previously announced that would no longer release on the Mac platfrom. Very good news for me, however, Matlab for Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy. (I am using Simulink, which relies heavily on OroborOSX.)
What kinds of bugs you ask? I can't always navigate through the fields in parameter boxes (one button mac mouse and the key combos just don't do it). I can't use the letters 'f' or 'd' in comments when OroborOSX isn't in the mood (well, there are 24 other letters in the alphabet). Matlab crashes reliably if I choose "cancel" instead of "save" with the "save as" command (in a Simulink model).
And sometimes when Matlab crashes, XDarwin doesn't shut down completely which prevents me from being able to reboot from the system on my internal hard drive -- I have to reboot from an external hard drive and then restart. It happened (again) yesterday while I was working at a coffeeshop.
I'm not sure who's to blame here, and I'm really pleased that Matlab is available, but the integration of these various programs still has a long way to go.
blog-O-rama (more raving & ranting about my experiences with OS X, etc. etc.)
There's a subtle tautology involved in the author's claim that "the whole product" that cornered the market was superior. It's equivalent to saying that the product must have been better or people wouldn't have bought --- there's no way to falsify this claim.
If the whole product includes the network externalities involved with purchasing the dominant product, which is the argument that the author makes about 'Wintel PCs', then the superior technology is by definition the winning technology, and vice versa. I think we still want and need to separate out technological issues from the strategic marketing decisions. The "whole product" concept does not prove that an inferior technology cannot prevail in the marketplace, it simply defines the possibility out of existence.
The cold war cost billions of dollars in real resources. It was a huge tax on the populations of all countries involved, contributed to massive environmental damage, and led to military support, arms and training for numerous guerilla organizations that either inflicted suffering on their own people (Honduras and Guatemala) or that turned out to be ill considered allies (like the Taliban).
While the behavior of those corporations seeking to protect their monopoly/oligopoly is unlikely to lead to wasted resources on the same scale, tremendous inefficiencies can be caused by, and I would argue, have laready been caused by, the strategic actions taken by the producers of proprietary software. It's not just the final outcome that matters.
zine with companion articles
on
Review: Illegal Art
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This month's issue of the 'zine stay free! has companion articles and a CD with some of the pieces in/related to the exhibit, like negativland's U2 radio mix and sampled tracks from De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit in Chicago.
According to the article, this system is aimed at providing maintenance crews with more information about the best action to take to maintain road conditions, an excellent idea.
However, a system which aims to provide better information about traffic congestion to individual drivers can have the unexpected consequence of making congestion worse --- one study by Mahmassani and Jayakrishnan showed that when individuals use a best response strategy the performance of the system as a whole degrades if more than 25% of drivers have access to real time traffic information.
We show how this concentration effect works in a paper on the El Farol bar problem titled "Coordination Failure as a Source of Congestion in Information Networks" (download from here)
--- when agents have "too much" information they are unable to successfully coordinate their behavior.
But the same economic problem exists for chips as for everything else --- it's not that chips take real resources to produce, which is obvious, but that not all the costs of production are reflected in the price of the chips. Every time a chip manufacturer, or anyone else, pollutes for free or exposes people to toxic hazards they create a negative externality, a market inefficiency that sends the wrong signal about the real costs of the product in question.
If manufacturers had to pay for the pollution they create, they'd have a powerful incentive to look for cleaner ways to produce things.
The existence of externalities has long been one of the key arguments for government intervention in the economy. In a competive market place even a company that would like to "do the right thing" (not poisoning the environment or workers) cannot if it means that other companies will be able to produce the same product for less.
Government regulations, representing the intent to compensate people for negative externalities, also provide an incentive for firms to look for cleaner ways to produce. That's why many environmental regulations ultimately cost firms (& consumers) much less than predicted.
Check out the work of architecht and industrial designer William McDonough, who has great ideas and several cool projects that use cutting edge technology to rethink the entire production process. Check out his new book Cradle to Cradle, written with chemist Michael Braungart,
"is a manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. Through historical sketches on the roots of the industrial revolution; commentary on science, nature and society; descriptions of key design principles; and compelling examples of innovative products and business strategies already reshaping the marketplace, McDonough and Braungart make the case that an industrial system that 'takes, makes and wastes' can become a creator of goods and services that generate ecological, social and economic value."
This recent slashdot post talked about his firm's ideas for a recyclable car.
While the overall behavior of the RIAA (and judging from the article, of the IFPI) is despicable, it's interesting to see how the tactics of opposing groups co-evolve over time. The problem, mentioned time and time again, is that the overall strategy of the music industry is backward looking, seeking to preserve the advantages it enjoyed in the past rather than looking forward to see how it can put itself in the best position in the future.
I also thought the comment that one of the major mistakes that the industry made was letting napster et. al. create the expectation that music was/is, and hence should be, free (as in beer). Record companies resist lowering the price of CDs in part because they want to preserve the belief that $16.95 is a "reasonable" price.
The idea that people base their purchase decisions on what items "ought" to cost is almost completely at odds away with how consumer behavior is modeled by economists --- the analytical results that show how markets are efficient would go right in the trash under these assumptions about individual behavior.
1. Spend time mulling over and planning new features
2. Code, debug, document
3. Detest everything about this project and do nothing at all
4. Rinse and repeat...
Ha! That's a familiar cycle to me, not just for coding, but for lots of projects that involve intense concentration. Fine if you work on your own, or in an environment where you have substantial control over your own time like academia --- harder to manage in a more structured environment. Maybe this is one reason for the success of open source, it readily accomodates this kind of nonlinear effort and progress.
The trick is knowing when to give it a rest or pass it on to someone else, and when to give yourself a kick in the butt to get back to work.
I disagree strongly with the previous poster that learning multiplication tables is a waste of time --- the procedure described is exactly the one that I used (made up on my own) and still use. I memorized the diagonal elements of the table --- 6 x 6, 7 x 7, and so on, and added to get the rest. (6 x 7 = 36 + 6 = 42) Sounds fine, until you try to learn division, particularly long division. And what about factoring? I found these things extremely frustrating, it took me twice as long to do it with more errors. I finally came to the conclusion that "I was no good at math", a belief that some of my teachers had no problem reinforcing because "girls don't need to be good at math". (Yes, my 6th grade teacher really said that.) I loved geometry and trigonometry because they were the only classes that didn't build on my missing math facts, but it wasn't until I got to college that I rediscovered math (and my true identity as a geek).
I've played with a math education series that Stanford U sells for math learning at home, and it teaches math on the conceptual level and problem solving during the lessons, but every one of them is followed by timed drill on basic math facts (in the form of video games). They've found that quick recall of math facts makes a (positive) difference. Kids are capable of substantial memorization feats and are often proud of their ability to recite facts. Basic math facts are worth the effort of memorization.
This from Bill Sethares: "I upgraded my RCA Cosmac computer to 512 bytes. I programmed a version of Conway's game of life and watched it for hours on a black and white TV."
Our brains certainly store memories that we can't access on demand --- a few years ago I spent some time everyday doing writing exercises described in Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones and found myself remembering long forgotten events from junior high school. Among other things, I remembered that I had a written an ongoing soap opera with a friend, based on the people we knew at school and also that I had written a note back and forth with Keith Hendrix (he had completely dropped out of my memory) on the bus on the way to a school ski trip. The coolest part was, I also remembered that I had saved all the notes and was able to dig them out of my parent's attic.
On the other hand, I also have a journal entry from high school talking about a day I would never forget --- I actually wrote "I don't need to write down what happened today because I'll never forget it". Yeah, right.
Slashdot Mirror
blog-O-rama
I'm not sure what the banking requirements for e-money schemes would be like, but banks are only required to keep a small fraction of deposits in reserve. If that applied to e-money as well it would expand the investment options for the money collected by e-money firms.
Of course, consumers understand this logic perfectly well --- why should I pay for the privilege of spending my own money? why not just use a debit card and cut out the intermediate steps? That's one reason why these ideas have been floating around since the 1980's without really catching on.
My point: a lot of hype about a "cashless society" is coming from firms with an interest in replacing the current system with one in which they effectively "issue currency" and make money off of the float, as well as from percentage based and flat fees. They don't mean "cashless"--they mean "use our cash instead of theirs."
arrrggh, I never thought it would come to this, but...
1) issue alternative currency
2) ????
3) Profit!
except that in this case ????? = collect interest.
blog-O-rama
A better trick than turning water into wine, IMHO.
blog-O-rama
The economist George Akerlof modeled the cooperative aspects of the labor market formally in a paper called "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange" ( Quarterly Journal of EconomicsVol. 97, No. 4, pp. 543-569).
I find the view that reading /. or making phone calls at work is "stealing" to be naive and simplistic --- so much depends on subtle (or not so subtle) levels of effort that cannot be measured or coerced. The poster's comments that "two can play at that game. You want me to work every second I am at work that's fine. But when that clock hits 5:00 I drop everything and leave." illustrate this perfectly.
blog-O-rama
My offtopic question is: why doesn't this happen with Linux ? (or does it happen with Linux?)
I don't use Linux and I'm not a bonafide geek (I've never had 'root' access, which seems to be one of the key requirements --- that may change now that I use Mac OS X), and I've always wondered why using fixes, new functions, patches, whatever, written by numerous different people hasn't turned Linux or other open source into a non-functioning morass of code. I read Eric Raymond's The Cathedral & the Bazaar but I didn't really feel like he answered the question, other than refering to the gospel of Linus "with enough eyes, any bug is shallow."
Isn't an operating system more complicated (or at least more fundamental) than an application? Why doesn't (or how often) does fixing one bug in Linux create two new ones?
blog-O-rama
I, for one, felt a deep heavy sadness when I saw the news this morning, far beyond the deaths of seven human beings. Space flight is dangerous, and astronauts are brave and dedicated --- I think it's reasonable to feel differently about a group of people that die trying to achieve a worthy and inspiring goal than about the same number of people, or even the exact same people, dying accidentally.
annmariabell.com
blog-O-rama
if I should die before I wake
all my bones and sinew take
put them in the compost pile
to decompose there for a while
when corn or radishes you munch
you may be having me for lunch
then excrete me with a grin
chortling 'there goes pete again!'
blog-O-rama
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Carcinoma (n.), a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Bustard (n.), a very rude Metrobus driver.
Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Semantics (n.), pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's prayer book together just before vespers.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Marionettes (n.), residents of Washington who have been jerked around by the mayor.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
Frisbatarianism (n.), Belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
annmariabell.com
If this is as good at it gets I'm in deep trouble. One of the synergies between Mac OS X and Linux is that Matlab is available for the Mac again, after Mathworks had previously announced that would no longer release on the Mac platfrom. Very good news for me, however, Matlab for Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy. (I am using Simulink, which relies heavily on OroborOSX.)
What kinds of bugs you ask? I can't always navigate through the fields in parameter boxes (one button mac mouse and the key combos just don't do it). I can't use the letters 'f' or 'd' in comments when OroborOSX isn't in the mood (well, there are 24 other letters in the alphabet). Matlab crashes reliably if I choose "cancel" instead of "save" with the "save as" command (in a Simulink model).
And sometimes when Matlab crashes, XDarwin doesn't shut down completely which prevents me from being able to reboot from the system on my internal hard drive -- I have to reboot from an external hard drive and then restart. It happened (again) yesterday while I was working at a coffeeshop.
I'm not sure who's to blame here, and I'm really pleased that Matlab is available, but the integration of these various programs still has a long way to go.
blog-O-rama (more raving & ranting about my experiences with OS X, etc. etc.)
just the girl geeks.
If the whole product includes the network externalities involved with purchasing the dominant product, which is the argument that the author makes about 'Wintel PCs', then the superior technology is by definition the winning technology, and vice versa. I think we still want and need to separate out technological issues from the strategic marketing decisions. The "whole product" concept does not prove that an inferior technology cannot prevail in the marketplace, it simply defines the possibility out of existence.
annmariabell.com
While the behavior of those corporations seeking to protect their monopoly/oligopoly is unlikely to lead to wasted resources on the same scale, tremendous inefficiencies can be caused by, and I would argue, have laready been caused by, the strategic actions taken by the producers of proprietary software. It's not just the final outcome that matters.
This month's issue of the 'zine stay free! has companion articles and a CD with some of the pieces in/related to the exhibit, like negativland's U2 radio mix and sampled tracks from De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit in Chicago.
However, a system which aims to provide better information about traffic congestion to individual drivers can have the unexpected consequence of making congestion worse --- one study by Mahmassani and Jayakrishnan showed that when individuals use a best response strategy the performance of the system as a whole degrades if more than 25% of drivers have access to real time traffic information.
We show how this concentration effect works in a paper on the El Farol bar problem titled "Coordination Failure as a Source of Congestion in Information Networks" (download from here) --- when agents have "too much" information they are unable to successfully coordinate their behavior.
But the same economic problem exists for chips as for everything else --- it's not that chips take real resources to produce, which is obvious, but that not all the costs of production are reflected in the price of the chips. Every time a chip manufacturer, or anyone else, pollutes for free or exposes people to toxic hazards they create a negative externality, a market inefficiency that sends the wrong signal about the real costs of the product in question.
If manufacturers had to pay for the pollution they create, they'd have a powerful incentive to look for cleaner ways to produce things.
The existence of externalities has long been one of the key arguments for government intervention in the economy. In a competive market place even a company that would like to "do the right thing" (not poisoning the environment or workers) cannot if it means that other companies will be able to produce the same product for less.
Government regulations, representing the intent to compensate people for negative externalities, also provide an incentive for firms to look for cleaner ways to produce. That's why many environmental regulations ultimately cost firms (& consumers) much less than predicted.
This recent slashdot post talked about his firm's ideas for a recyclable car.
annmariabell.com
"we aren't blocking traffic, we are traffic"
how long before segway riders organize take-back-the-sidewalks rides?
annmariabell.com
I also thought the comment that one of the major mistakes that the industry made was letting napster et. al. create the expectation that music was/is, and hence should be, free (as in beer). Record companies resist lowering the price of CDs in part because they want to preserve the belief that $16.95 is a "reasonable" price.
The idea that people base their purchase decisions on what items "ought" to cost is almost completely at odds away with how consumer behavior is modeled by economists --- the analytical results that show how markets are efficient would go right in the trash under these assumptions about individual behavior.
annmariabell.com
2. Code, debug, document
3. Detest everything about this project and do nothing at all
4. Rinse and repeat...
Ha! That's a familiar cycle to me, not just for coding, but for lots of projects that involve intense concentration. Fine if you work on your own, or in an environment where you have substantial control over your own time like academia --- harder to manage in a more structured environment. Maybe this is one reason for the success of open source, it readily accomodates this kind of nonlinear effort and progress.
The trick is knowing when to give it a rest or pass it on to someone else, and when to give yourself a kick in the butt to get back to work.
annmariabell.com
I've played with a math education series that Stanford U sells for math learning at home, and it teaches math on the conceptual level and problem solving during the lessons, but every one of them is followed by timed drill on basic math facts (in the form of video games). They've found that quick recall of math facts makes a (positive) difference. Kids are capable of substantial memorization feats and are often proud of their ability to recite facts. Basic math facts are worth the effort of memorization.
This from Bill Sethares:
"I upgraded my RCA Cosmac computer to 512 bytes. I programmed a version of Conway's game of life and watched it for hours on a black and white TV."
On the other hand, I also have a journal entry from high school talking about a day I would never forget --- I actually wrote "I don't need to write down what happened today because I'll never forget it". Yeah, right.
annmariabell.com
"The weight of the evidence must be in proportion to the strangeness of the fact."
I believe the quote is attributed to LaPlace, but a cursory google search didn't confirm it.
annmariabell.com