Would you go to the community center/park/mall to randomly ask people who they would recommend as a plumber? I use local2me, a similar service, and it's been invaluable as a source of information about local businesses. I know of no other way to get such information. Sure, my direct acquantainces may have this information, but they usually don't. By using a neighborhood list, I'm able to get the feedback of a lot more people.
-Kevin
This is NOT stupid. I belong to a similar group, Local2Me and it's been great. It's been the best source for me of information about contractors, local restaurants, etc. The quality of the contractors alone that we've found is huge. Once you've had some bad experience dealing with bad contractors, you'll realize how valuable it is to get other people's feedback of their own first-hand experiences. And for this type of info, neighborhood lists are the only way to go.
That sucks, but don't blame it on the bean counter. Typically, a company's benefits are structured so that they must apply to employees based on hours worked regardless of whether the employee/hiring manager wants it this way or not. To make an exception for one person in these cases is against federal laws.
I was co-founder of a company that attempted to wire residential apartment buildings many years ago. It turns out that wiring buildings after primary construction can be pretty expensive (just the labor: cost of wire/switches etc. per port aren't too bad) and can be hard to justify.
In addition, it sounds like the questioner has permission of the building owner to use the elevator shaft. He probably doesn't have permission to drill holes in the walls/ceilings/floors and install conduit which he would need to do something like this.
-Kevin
I used to work with PriceWaterhouseCoopers where I performed network security auditing. While I worked there, we NEVER did anything like what's reported in the article. We reported things like unpatched systems, firewall holes and often showed how our clients' networks were vulnerable to various threats, but never did we label our clients' network operators as primary risks.
-Kevin
If the 1% of people who have such stupid ideas about how to deal with spam simply responded to 100% of their spam, then the rest of us wouldn't have to respond to any of ours.
Adolescent Height Matters More than Current Height
on
Tall People Earn More
·
· Score: 1
according to "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height" (Persico/Postlewaite/Silverman)
Here's an easy to read synopsis of the paper:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2063439/
No wrongdoing - at least not substantiated.
on
DRAM Price Fixing
·
· Score: 1
The article does not make a compelling case that there has been any anti-competitive behavior by the DRAM companies.
In a competitive market, prices of different suppliers will converge: this is to be expected and is not evidence that anything anti-competitive is occurring.
Withholding goods for sale in the hopes that prices will go up is also fine. Hopefully, there's not a supplier in a market with monopoly power, and the DRAM market is competitive enough that there is no such supplier.
Now, if the suppliers got together and came to an agreement to reduce supply, e.g. "I won't expand my factory if you don't" or "I will limit my sales if you do too" this would be anti-competitive, but it doesn't look to me like this is happening.
The price charged is not directly determined by the cost of production for profit-maximizing entities. Now, if they were producing a commodity, then (absent collusion/anti-competitive practices) competition between producers will lower the price charged. However, music is pretty far from being a commodity: one piece of music is generally a poor substitute for another. So lowering the costs of production should not be expected to lower the price charged.
The good news is that it might increase the quantity of music available for purchase. Hopefully there will be more good new tunes with lower production costs than there woould be otherwise.
Note that lower production costs do not necessarily mean that music producers make more $$$. Since more music is likely to be produced, music sales may be divided between more producers. Unless people buy more music, some producers could wind up making even less $$$.
Bruce Sterling has written twice about smart mobs. It's been a while since I read it, but IIRC he wrote about them in:
Distraction, as an event that was discussed in the novel, where a random mob suddenly comes together to completely destroy a bank in under two minutes.
A short story in A Good Old Fashioned Future where a computer mediates between people doing almost random favors for each other that result in great things being accomplished.
IIRC, you have it reversed: he wrote his SciFi under Iain M. and his non-SciFi under just Iain. I love his SciFi, but his other stuff is a little too weird for me (I've only read The Wasp Factory of his non-SciFi).
Arrow proved that you can't have an electoral system that simultaneously meets some very basic criteria (for number of candidates > 2). It doesn't matter how many turns you have. One of the problems that you run into is that there is almost guaranteed to be a number of voters who have an incentive to lie about which candidate(s) they prefer: there's no point in voting for your favorite candidate if they have no chance to make it to the second turn. You might as well vote for a less-favored candidate, if your vote might have a chance of taking them to the second turn.
Keep in mind that Amazon has been saying January, 2003 ever since they stopped saying January, 2002 and this was updated AFTER the date that Amazon originally claimed that it would come out. In my experience, Amazon generally is accurate about release dates, but I don't trust them on this one.
I think that everyone is mis-reading the memo. It doesn't say that Dell is prohibited from selling non-Microsoft OSes, rather it stipulates that they may not sell machines without an OS. I'm not saying that this is reasonable or that it should be legal, but it's certainly better than being prevented from selling a non-MS OS.
-Kevin
Hopefully you already hold the property rights to your house (I do for mine). I believe that the discussion is about things for which property rights are being dispensed by the government.
Think about it, though. If someone else can use your house more efficiently than you can, presumably they would be willing to make an offer to purchase it that you would be willing to accept.
Appealing to morality when it comes to resource allocation, however, will get you nowhere. Unless, of course, you can somehow bring the world into agreement on what would be the "moral" allocation. I think Stalin had a go at this, but ultimately he wasn't succssful. Perhaps you'll have better luck.
Wow- it never occurred to me before: government hasn't done a good job at allocating resources!!!!
The article is stupid. It takes this no-brainer observation and tries to imply that individuals should not be given true property rights. Experience shows that commons are not efficient. Unfortunately, experience also shows that the state is not good at pricing/allocating property rights, but THIS is what we should work at improving, not trying to find some new, magical solution.
Slashdot Mirror
The secret if you're a "D" average student is to not change just one grade, but change them all. That way, the "A" won't stick out.
Can you give us any details on what you're currently writing and a guess as to when we'll see it?
Just wait until you have young kids and need to keep the entire library of Sesame Street, Barney, et al. easily available....
As a very happy user of Local2Me (that's my only affiliation with the service), I have to say that their method works very well. -Kevin
Would you go to the community center/park/mall to randomly ask people who they would recommend as a plumber? I use local2me, a similar service, and it's been invaluable as a source of information about local businesses. I know of no other way to get such information. Sure, my direct acquantainces may have this information, but they usually don't. By using a neighborhood list, I'm able to get the feedback of a lot more people. -Kevin
This is NOT stupid. I belong to a similar group, Local2Me and it's been great. It's been the best source for me of information about contractors, local restaurants, etc. The quality of the contractors alone that we've found is huge. Once you've had some bad experience dealing with bad contractors, you'll realize how valuable it is to get other people's feedback of their own first-hand experiences. And for this type of info, neighborhood lists are the only way to go.
-Kevin
That sucks, but don't blame it on the bean counter. Typically, a company's benefits are structured so that they must apply to employees based on hours worked regardless of whether the employee/hiring manager wants it this way or not. To make an exception for one person in these cases is against federal laws.
"We qualify at 1430 to earn our access to Saturday's Grand Challenge."
I think that this was written before they qualified. According to DARPA's press release yesterday, Red Team did not attempt qualification yesterday.
In addition, it sounds like the questioner has permission of the building owner to use the elevator shaft. He probably doesn't have permission to drill holes in the walls/ceilings/floors and install conduit which he would need to do something like this. -Kevin
I used to work with PriceWaterhouseCoopers where I performed network security auditing. While I worked there, we NEVER did anything like what's reported in the article. We reported things like unpatched systems, firewall holes and often showed how our clients' networks were vulnerable to various threats, but never did we label our clients' network operators as primary risks. -Kevin
If the 1% of people who have such stupid ideas about how to deal with spam simply responded to 100% of their spam, then the rest of us wouldn't have to respond to any of ours.
according to "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height" (Persico/Postlewaite/Silverman) Here's an easy to read synopsis of the paper: http://slate.msn.com/id/2063439/
The article does not make a compelling case that there has been any anti-competitive behavior by the DRAM companies. In a competitive market, prices of different suppliers will converge: this is to be expected and is not evidence that anything anti-competitive is occurring. Withholding goods for sale in the hopes that prices will go up is also fine. Hopefully, there's not a supplier in a market with monopoly power, and the DRAM market is competitive enough that there is no such supplier. Now, if the suppliers got together and came to an agreement to reduce supply, e.g. "I won't expand my factory if you don't" or "I will limit my sales if you do too" this would be anti-competitive, but it doesn't look to me like this is happening.
The good news is that it might increase the quantity of music available for purchase. Hopefully there will be more good new tunes with lower production costs than there woould be otherwise.
Note that lower production costs do not necessarily mean that music producers make more $$$. Since more music is likely to be produced, music sales may be divided between more producers. Unless people buy more music, some producers could wind up making even less $$$.
Distraction, as an event that was discussed in the novel, where a random mob suddenly comes together to completely destroy a bank in under two minutes.
A short story in A Good Old Fashioned Future where a computer mediates between people doing almost random favors for each other that result in great things being accomplished.
IIRC, you have it reversed: he wrote his SciFi under Iain M. and his non-SciFi under just Iain. I love his SciFi, but his other stuff is a little too weird for me (I've only read The Wasp Factory of his non-SciFi).
Arrow proved that you can't have an electoral system that simultaneously meets some very basic criteria (for number of candidates > 2). It doesn't matter how many turns you have. One of the problems that you run into is that there is almost guaranteed to be a number of voters who have an incentive to lie about which candidate(s) they prefer: there's no point in voting for your favorite candidate if they have no chance to make it to the second turn. You might as well vote for a less-favored candidate, if your vote might have a chance of taking them to the second turn.
Keep in mind that Amazon has been saying January, 2003 ever since they stopped saying January, 2002 and this was updated AFTER the date that Amazon originally claimed that it would come out. In my experience, Amazon generally is accurate about release dates, but I don't trust them on this one.
I think that everyone is mis-reading the memo. It doesn't say that Dell is prohibited from selling non-Microsoft OSes, rather it stipulates that they may not sell machines without an OS. I'm not saying that this is reasonable or that it should be legal, but it's certainly better than being prevented from selling a non-MS OS. -Kevin
Hopefully you already hold the property rights to your house (I do for mine). I believe that the discussion is about things for which property rights are being dispensed by the government. Think about it, though. If someone else can use your house more efficiently than you can, presumably they would be willing to make an offer to purchase it that you would be willing to accept. Appealing to morality when it comes to resource allocation, however, will get you nowhere. Unless, of course, you can somehow bring the world into agreement on what would be the "moral" allocation. I think Stalin had a go at this, but ultimately he wasn't succssful. Perhaps you'll have better luck.
Wow- it never occurred to me before: government hasn't done a good job at allocating resources!!!! The article is stupid. It takes this no-brainer observation and tries to imply that individuals should not be given true property rights. Experience shows that commons are not efficient. Unfortunately, experience also shows that the state is not good at pricing/allocating property rights, but THIS is what we should work at improving, not trying to find some new, magical solution.
javaranch.com is pretty good.