Or they've decided that adapter licensing is much more profitable than cable licensing, and are revoking these licenses so they can issue more-profitable adapter licenses.
If someone put you in their "BFF" circle, and you put them in your "Acquaintances" circle, do you really want them to see that and potentially move you into their "People to Stalk" circle?
It's probably a sign that Facebook is becoming mature, hitting their initial peak and losing a few users who didn't really understand it or need it in the first place. They'll probably lose quite a few users in the near future, settling back to a core set of users, though still over 100 million. If they provide useful functionality for people, they'll grow at a more reasonable rate and continue to mature. If they panic in the face of losing users and pull some BS maneuver and start blasting out spam, they'll die on the vine.
Are there any studies around the rise and fall of AOL and MySpace? Some enterprising college student should put that together.
More likely they said, "Hey, we're done with this moon survey mission and have a bunch of gas left. What do we do with this big collection of observation instruments? Oh, I know, let's send it out to a spot where it's good to put observatories."
That was a good article for me. I have the iPhone Dev Kit, have signed up for the developer program and paid my fee, and purchased the book reviewed above. Unfortunately, having not done any Mac development before, and not really getting Objective-C at all, it's been rough getting started. But I'm a passable C# programmer, and may just switch my efforts to Mono. I don't expect to develop anything that requires "to-the-metal" performance, so if the Mono business causes a little loss in performance, so be it.
I agree; people need to be able to care for themselves. Having a cold is no reason to go to an emergency room. But we have a situation in the U.S. where people with no insurance have no other way to get care than to go the the ER. A good start on healthcare reform in this country would be to have clinics that people could go to for basic needs. A lot of counties have these, but they end up full of homeless people and drug addicts, locking out people who need basic care. How do you differentiate? I have no idea. There's no real reason to differentiate. Give them all care, and keep staffing up until you can handle the load. But to make this effective, you'd have to first make it illegal for a physician to refer you to those clinics if you're insured. Or something. It would stop working if insurance companies suddenly stopped paying out for services that you could get at the free clinic. Thing is, there needs to be some menu of services that is limited to basic health (ear, nose, throat, etc.) and not more exotic stuff. If someone comes in with a problem that isn't on the menu, they should be referred to a hospital where they can get care. But at least they've got a place to go and get the basic stuff, taking the burden off of the ERs.
Want to see something amazing? Go to France and check out how much you can get done at a local pharmacy. The pharmacists there are more like nurse-practitioners here.
I agree that there's not really a correlation, but it at least allows for a system where an individual can pre-establish a self-identified value for their existence.
Something similar to this came up a few years ago when my friend and I were involved in a car wreck. It was without a doubt the fault of the other driver, and after all the evidence was heard, both insurance companies agreed. We both sustained injuries to our backs that, while treated, give us both problems to this day. It's nothing either of us can clearly define, but since the accident, we're both diminished. The end result of the insurance settlement was that we each got around $12K, out of which medical bills had to be paid. I think I ended up with about $4K in my pocket at the end of it all. My friend and I were talking about the situation, and we both found it ironic that if you added up all the hours we spent going to the doctors and lawyers offices, filling out paperwork, and otherwise dealing with the situation, we each made somewhere around $20 an hour and have to live with the after effects of injury for the rest of our lives. While neither of us are exactly rich, neither of us would work for (could afford to work for) a wage as low as $20 per hour. On the other hand, an opportunity to make $20 an hour to someone who normally makes minimum wage seems like a huge advantage. Insurance companies certainly don't want to hear that, though, when talking to the likes of my friend and I. Essentially what happened is that they wore us down to the point that we were just tired of dealing with the situation and just settled.
The place where this idea of basing a maximum payout on a person's life insurance policy really falls apart is if there is long term pain involved. If, due to a malpractice issue, a person is going to irreparably live their life in pain, caps should come off. But if it's just an issue of someone being inconvenienced for a short period of time (say, under two years), then some sort of ranking needs to be in place, as much to create a type of index or multiplier as anything else. If my neighbor, the lawyer, gets laid up for two months, then can only work half time for another year after that, he should be compensated at his full hourly rate for the period of time he can't work (he can demonstrate that his calendar has been full for a significant period of time). Let's say that number is $400K. If my other neighbor, the self-employed guy who spends most of his time spinning his wheels such that his wife works at the grocery store so they can pay their bills, finds himself in the same situation, I would have a hard time seeing that someone should award him the same $400K for the same hardship, since he probably hasn't made $400K in the last decade. But the way our system works, he could demonstrate that, being self-employed, he has the POTENTIAL to make that much money, so he might get an award that big.
I don't think I have exactly the right answer, but it may be better than the one we've been using.
My wife and I just leased a car this summer, a 2009 Subaru Forester. Having experienced a lot of maintenance problems with the car we were replacing, we decided to pre-pay the maintenance on the Forester for the life of the lease, which is 3 years. It cost us about $1000 for the package that gets us oil changes every 3500 miles (we do a lot of city driving). When it came time for the first oil change, I drove over to the shop at the dealer (conveniently close to where we work), turned it over to them, and waited about 25 minutes for them to change the oil. Then I got in the car and drove off, no co-pay, no nothing.
Over the 45K miles of the lease, we'll probably get the oil changed twelve or thirteen times, which would cost us about $600. But there are several other maintenance items along the way that are covered under the plan, including one that costs about $700. One could argue that we could sneak by without having those maintenance items done, and the car would be just fine. But regular checkups and periodic maintenance help a vehicle run well, and help forestall any major catastrophes that cause big problems at unexpected times. So I'm planning to stay on the maintenance schedule, and I expect to turn a healthy car back into the dealership at the end of the lease.
Would you go to the doctor more if it didn't cost you anything than you do now? Probably. But you wouldn't go all the time for everything (some people would, but they're in the minority), because you have better things to do with your time than go to the doctor. Ultimately, though, you'd probably retire healthier if you had free, accessible health care that was of decent quality.
So, how do we get ourselves there? We need a better system than we have, and it probably doesn't need to (shouldn't) involve insurance companies in the capacity they are now. The other end of it is our knee-jerk reaction to sue doctors for malpractice for every little thing. If an issue is egregious, there should be punishment of some sort, and the patient should be compensated somehow. But millions of dollars for doing a complicated procedure less than perfectly is insane.
How about limiting settlements to the total value of someone's carried life insurance policies? Shouldn't the judicial system put the same value on someone's life as that person puts on their own?
First, our system of government isn't designed to put people in place who are in a position to make decisions about what something should cost. Also, in a free market economy (which is what we're supposed to have but don't), if you fix the price of one thing, all the other prices adjust to accommodate that price point.
It may seem obvious, once you think about it, that fixing the price of a volume of coffee will raise the price of a paper cup, because the vendor wants to maintain their ability to define their own profit margin and will adjust what prices they can. But what's not necessarily obvious is that, in an economy like ours, the price of everything is connected, so fixing the price of a volume of coffee raises the price of the coffee bean, because the bean vendor knows they can take as much as they want of that end cup; the price is fixed, and they know what it is. So the price of the cup of coffee goes up, charging a premium for the paper cup. This drives more people to drink tea. The coffee markets are affected, and bean wholesalers start to complain that they aren't moving as much product. The ripples continue. Coffee shops start to go out of business because they can't make a profit. Jobs are lost. Wages in the restaurant industry go down as the market is flooded with people willing to work for low wages just to have a job. Now everyone in the restaurant industry, except the owners, have less money to spend. That's a big chunk of the working class people in this country (I've heard over 30% quoted). Oh, crap, now what do we do? I know, start fixing the price of things, because working class people can't afford what they want...
Most of the posts here are great, and cover the subject well. I tried to start an OSS project many years ago without being a capable coder. I had some initial interest, but it flagged almost immediately. What I didn't understand is that no one else was as interested in the project as I was, and that such a project couldn't be managed in the same way that a project at work was managed. People don't want to work all day for pay, then experience the same thing for free.
If your idea can get implemented at a basic level and then grow, I say pay someone to do the basic implementation and then, as someone above suggested, do a quick release. If it's something that you want to do, but it'll basically get written once and not grow much, keep the source to yourself and market it, maybe as share ware. You may find that, once someone gets the initial code written, you can maintain it yourself.
He said his skills aren't amazing, not that he can't code. Likely he knows that some technologies are available and in common use, but just doesn't know how to implement them. Also, there are a bunch of people out there (me included, for that matter) who are much better at design than implementation. That's why the construction industry has architects and construction workers.
I know a guy in IT security. He's generally a happy person, with a good family life to keep him busy. He plays horn with a band, with practice keeping him busy several times a week. He says that's what keeps him sane.
Actually, I just checked one of my e-mail addresses that has historically gotten about a hundred a day, and the Spam bucket only has 26 for yesterday and similar numbers for the last couple of days.
I read recently about some big spam king (czar, whatever) that got arrested. I wonder if taking him out of the equation actually had an effect on the world.
Here in Portland, Free Geek takes tech junk and recycles it. They build computers that get donated to schools (running Linux) and dismantle unusable/unwanted components right down to the chip level, sending totes full of parts off to smelters.
They've open-sourced their business model, and there are evidently other locations cropping up around the nation. Check your local listings.
Slashdot Mirror
We used to call the Taliban "freedom fighters" when they were trying to kick the Soviets out of their country.
Or they've decided that adapter licensing is much more profitable than cable licensing, and are revoking these licenses so they can issue more-profitable adapter licenses.
You, though, aren't a good fit for a social network. Freedom's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
If someone put you in their "BFF" circle, and you put them in your "Acquaintances" circle, do you really want them to see that and potentially move you into their "People to Stalk" circle?
It's probably a sign that Facebook is becoming mature, hitting their initial peak and losing a few users who didn't really understand it or need it in the first place. They'll probably lose quite a few users in the near future, settling back to a core set of users, though still over 100 million. If they provide useful functionality for people, they'll grow at a more reasonable rate and continue to mature. If they panic in the face of losing users and pull some BS maneuver and start blasting out spam, they'll die on the vine.
Are there any studies around the rise and fall of AOL and MySpace? Some enterprising college student should put that together.
They should get sponsorship money from Doritos and R.C. Cola.
In Korea, only old people use Dropbox.
[Sorry, I haven't been around in a while...]
More likely they said, "Hey, we're done with this moon survey mission and have a bunch of gas left. What do we do with this big collection of observation instruments? Oh, I know, let's send it out to a spot where it's good to put observatories."
Only they probably said it in Chinese.
I don't think "almost half" counts as "a tiny percentage":
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/chinas-debt-to-us-treasury-more-than-indicated/
Right. Because we're so adept at that.
11. Obesity (undeclared).
"because Darwin chose the term Evolution to refer to that, thereby evolving the term."
There, fixed it for you.
That was a good article for me. I have the iPhone Dev Kit, have signed up for the developer program and paid my fee, and purchased the book reviewed above. Unfortunately, having not done any Mac development before, and not really getting Objective-C at all, it's been rough getting started. But I'm a passable C# programmer, and may just switch my efforts to Mono. I don't expect to develop anything that requires "to-the-metal" performance, so if the Mono business causes a little loss in performance, so be it.
I agree; people need to be able to care for themselves. Having a cold is no reason to go to an emergency room. But we have a situation in the U.S. where people with no insurance have no other way to get care than to go the the ER. A good start on healthcare reform in this country would be to have clinics that people could go to for basic needs. A lot of counties have these, but they end up full of homeless people and drug addicts, locking out people who need basic care. How do you differentiate? I have no idea. There's no real reason to differentiate. Give them all care, and keep staffing up until you can handle the load. But to make this effective, you'd have to first make it illegal for a physician to refer you to those clinics if you're insured. Or something. It would stop working if insurance companies suddenly stopped paying out for services that you could get at the free clinic. Thing is, there needs to be some menu of services that is limited to basic health (ear, nose, throat, etc.) and not more exotic stuff. If someone comes in with a problem that isn't on the menu, they should be referred to a hospital where they can get care. But at least they've got a place to go and get the basic stuff, taking the burden off of the ERs.
Want to see something amazing? Go to France and check out how much you can get done at a local pharmacy. The pharmacists there are more like nurse-practitioners here.
I agree that there's not really a correlation, but it at least allows for a system where an individual can pre-establish a self-identified value for their existence.
Something similar to this came up a few years ago when my friend and I were involved in a car wreck. It was without a doubt the fault of the other driver, and after all the evidence was heard, both insurance companies agreed. We both sustained injuries to our backs that, while treated, give us both problems to this day. It's nothing either of us can clearly define, but since the accident, we're both diminished. The end result of the insurance settlement was that we each got around $12K, out of which medical bills had to be paid. I think I ended up with about $4K in my pocket at the end of it all. My friend and I were talking about the situation, and we both found it ironic that if you added up all the hours we spent going to the doctors and lawyers offices, filling out paperwork, and otherwise dealing with the situation, we each made somewhere around $20 an hour and have to live with the after effects of injury for the rest of our lives. While neither of us are exactly rich, neither of us would work for (could afford to work for) a wage as low as $20 per hour. On the other hand, an opportunity to make $20 an hour to someone who normally makes minimum wage seems like a huge advantage. Insurance companies certainly don't want to hear that, though, when talking to the likes of my friend and I. Essentially what happened is that they wore us down to the point that we were just tired of dealing with the situation and just settled.
The place where this idea of basing a maximum payout on a person's life insurance policy really falls apart is if there is long term pain involved. If, due to a malpractice issue, a person is going to irreparably live their life in pain, caps should come off. But if it's just an issue of someone being inconvenienced for a short period of time (say, under two years), then some sort of ranking needs to be in place, as much to create a type of index or multiplier as anything else. If my neighbor, the lawyer, gets laid up for two months, then can only work half time for another year after that, he should be compensated at his full hourly rate for the period of time he can't work (he can demonstrate that his calendar has been full for a significant period of time). Let's say that number is $400K. If my other neighbor, the self-employed guy who spends most of his time spinning his wheels such that his wife works at the grocery store so they can pay their bills, finds himself in the same situation, I would have a hard time seeing that someone should award him the same $400K for the same hardship, since he probably hasn't made $400K in the last decade. But the way our system works, he could demonstrate that, being self-employed, he has the POTENTIAL to make that much money, so he might get an award that big.
I don't think I have exactly the right answer, but it may be better than the one we've been using.
My wife and I just leased a car this summer, a 2009 Subaru Forester. Having experienced a lot of maintenance problems with the car we were replacing, we decided to pre-pay the maintenance on the Forester for the life of the lease, which is 3 years. It cost us about $1000 for the package that gets us oil changes every 3500 miles (we do a lot of city driving). When it came time for the first oil change, I drove over to the shop at the dealer (conveniently close to where we work), turned it over to them, and waited about 25 minutes for them to change the oil. Then I got in the car and drove off, no co-pay, no nothing.
Over the 45K miles of the lease, we'll probably get the oil changed twelve or thirteen times, which would cost us about $600. But there are several other maintenance items along the way that are covered under the plan, including one that costs about $700. One could argue that we could sneak by without having those maintenance items done, and the car would be just fine. But regular checkups and periodic maintenance help a vehicle run well, and help forestall any major catastrophes that cause big problems at unexpected times. So I'm planning to stay on the maintenance schedule, and I expect to turn a healthy car back into the dealership at the end of the lease.
Would you go to the doctor more if it didn't cost you anything than you do now? Probably. But you wouldn't go all the time for everything (some people would, but they're in the minority), because you have better things to do with your time than go to the doctor. Ultimately, though, you'd probably retire healthier if you had free, accessible health care that was of decent quality.
So, how do we get ourselves there? We need a better system than we have, and it probably doesn't need to (shouldn't) involve insurance companies in the capacity they are now. The other end of it is our knee-jerk reaction to sue doctors for malpractice for every little thing. If an issue is egregious, there should be punishment of some sort, and the patient should be compensated somehow. But millions of dollars for doing a complicated procedure less than perfectly is insane.
How about limiting settlements to the total value of someone's carried life insurance policies? Shouldn't the judicial system put the same value on someone's life as that person puts on their own?
Price controls are just a fool's game.
First, our system of government isn't designed to put people in place who are in a position to make decisions about what something should cost. Also, in a free market economy (which is what we're supposed to have but don't), if you fix the price of one thing, all the other prices adjust to accommodate that price point.
It may seem obvious, once you think about it, that fixing the price of a volume of coffee will raise the price of a paper cup, because the vendor wants to maintain their ability to define their own profit margin and will adjust what prices they can. But what's not necessarily obvious is that, in an economy like ours, the price of everything is connected, so fixing the price of a volume of coffee raises the price of the coffee bean, because the bean vendor knows they can take as much as they want of that end cup; the price is fixed, and they know what it is. So the price of the cup of coffee goes up, charging a premium for the paper cup. This drives more people to drink tea. The coffee markets are affected, and bean wholesalers start to complain that they aren't moving as much product. The ripples continue. Coffee shops start to go out of business because they can't make a profit. Jobs are lost. Wages in the restaurant industry go down as the market is flooded with people willing to work for low wages just to have a job. Now everyone in the restaurant industry, except the owners, have less money to spend. That's a big chunk of the working class people in this country (I've heard over 30% quoted). Oh, crap, now what do we do? I know, start fixing the price of things, because working class people can't afford what they want...
large tracts of land
Monte Python reference?
Most of the posts here are great, and cover the subject well. I tried to start an OSS project many years ago without being a capable coder. I had some initial interest, but it flagged almost immediately. What I didn't understand is that no one else was as interested in the project as I was, and that such a project couldn't be managed in the same way that a project at work was managed. People don't want to work all day for pay, then experience the same thing for free.
If your idea can get implemented at a basic level and then grow, I say pay someone to do the basic implementation and then, as someone above suggested, do a quick release. If it's something that you want to do, but it'll basically get written once and not grow much, keep the source to yourself and market it, maybe as share ware. You may find that, once someone gets the initial code written, you can maintain it yourself.
He said his skills aren't amazing, not that he can't code. Likely he knows that some technologies are available and in common use, but just doesn't know how to implement them. Also, there are a bunch of people out there (me included, for that matter) who are much better at design than implementation. That's why the construction industry has architects and construction workers.
I agree with your second point, though.
I know a guy in IT security. He's generally a happy person, with a good family life to keep him busy. He plays horn with a band, with practice keeping him busy several times a week. He says that's what keeps him sane.
Windows? Oh, right. The other operating system.
Actually, I just checked one of my e-mail addresses that has historically gotten about a hundred a day, and the Spam bucket only has 26 for yesterday and similar numbers for the last couple of days.
I read recently about some big spam king (czar, whatever) that got arrested. I wonder if taking him out of the equation actually had an effect on the world.
Shoulda called it "Disagremail."
Here in Portland, Free Geek takes tech junk and recycles it. They build computers that get donated to schools (running Linux) and dismantle unusable/unwanted components right down to the chip level, sending totes full of parts off to smelters. They've open-sourced their business model, and there are evidently other locations cropping up around the nation. Check your local listings.