First thing I do after this plan is executed is open a business in Chicago that correlates the GPS trackers parents give their kids to the public cameras.
No, not all economists agree. Some economists don't buy Keynesian theory and believe that the market is the market and intervention decreases (not increases) efficiency.
Holy crap. Have we learned absolutely nothing? I know it's been a whole 6 months, but does anyone remember problems with us extending loans in order to make risky investments "less risky"?
Reducing the cost of capital does not affect the risk of the endeavor. It just shifts it from the person taking out the loan to the person giving the loan. If the person giving the loan is the government (or gets bailed out by the government), then this shifts risk from the individual investor TO EVERY TAXPAYER.
Does this sound at all familiar to you?
I'm sorry, because I know you meant well, but I get so tired of people looking only at the benefit of an action without any consideration for the cost. I don't think I'm being overdramatic when I say it's going to end up destroying this country http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Nice thought, but you didn't really explain why my tax dollars should go to open source. You didn't explain why open source hasn't eclipsed "traditional" license software, if it's superior. If you are as confident in open source as I am, then let's just break the barriers (including lobbying) in government to considering it as a fair option and let the market decide which is best.
For YOU or some government official to decide that open source is better than other options is arrogant, and it's decisions like that which have caused our government to make "investments" on inferior alternatives throughout modern (read: since the income tax) history.
> This seems far more reasonable than the tax-payer pays for software to be developed, > gets nothing, or possibly some single version of some software.. Then a few years > down the line the tax-payer needs to pay for the sofware they paid to be written yet > again for version 2...
Um, what? Are you just speculating on possible scenarios, or are you trying to imply this actually happens? There is an initial version and then maintenance and new versions. Either the original vendor does all of this or it does some of it. It is not relevant whether the code is open source or not; the state has the right to modify it in every modern case of custom development I've ever heard of. The only difference is whether state A can freely give that product to state B without compensating the vendor. I know we all like to think in a vacuum, but I can tell you that if that is the contract stipulation, the only vendors willing to bid on the RFP will be low quality firms with no experience doing the same project in other states.
Not knowing the details, I'm assuming it's similar to having a database of temps in C and a database of temps in F, if there weren't a nice little formula to convert the values.
Parent believes everyone should presume innocence until it is proven otherwise. For you to say he can't believe that because everyone is entitled to their opinion is a bit hypocritical.
Sounds like an arbitrary distinction. Whether ROI is achieved by re-sell or higher profit margins on related products is not really a meaningful distinction in any way I can figure.
What does that even mean? When the consumers decide to utilize a product, they pay. It's not obligatory, because they choose to purchase the service. If you're saying the consumers can "purchase" the service in this case and still not have to pay anything, you're wrong. See below.
> Google isn't truly free because you get AdSense on the right of every > search, which are paid for by advertisers.
No, it's paid by users. If users do not buy more shit as a result of AdSense, then advertisers do not have any reason to pay for the advertising. The "oh we'll just support this free service with ads" model only works if the users end up paying for the service with their extra consumption. This is money they would not have paid if they hadn't used the service and seen the ad, by definition.
> Wikipedia is free but gets millions in donations from many sources.
From whom? Magical donation fairies? Again, this is a series of users paying for a service. We are only talking about models of enforceability here. In the Wikipedia donation model, they utilize ad campaigns that they hope will trigger an emotional response from people who value the service and essentially guilt them into paying for the service they thought was free. Are they "obligated" to donate? Are users "obligated" to click on ads. YES! If they don't, wikipedia and any other "free" service dies. The only difference you are making is with the individual user. You're saying (I think) that since the individual user can choose not to donate, then that is somehow different than a normal business model.
Sorry, it's not. Very few business models are constructed in a way where every consumer pays the same amount for their service. Look at insurance, the lottery, cable internet, any store that ever has a sale, etc.
Just to add another one: when you buy deodorant, you are paying for products taken for free by shoplifters.
> Nothing of use is truly free to produce, (see parent) but since the > cost of disseminating digital services divides to almost nothing per > client, only a few of those customers need to support the provider > to keep everyone in "free" service.
Having x/n users pay the cost and (n-x)/n users skate free is not any different from requiring every user to pay 1/n of the cost, except that there are almost no businesses where every user provides the exact same profit margin.
> When I can try a fully-functional product/service before investing a > dime, I am much more likely to pay/donate than if I am required to > pay even nominal cost upfront.
Again, this is nothing new. Right now I have a $60k piece of software on my laptop that I'm evaluating for a client. I didn't pay a dime for it, because the company knows precisely what you state above.
Um, what? Hate to stomp on your analogy, especially since you got modded up for it, but... do you have any idea how much the government pays private contractors to build and maintain roads? Millions and millions of dollars.
You're talking about two totally different things: cost centers and free software.
Amen. The jerk who owns the grocery store down the street won't let me into his store because he says I'm a thief. If he's not willing to sell his stuff to me, I'll just steal it.
And where were you when reasonable people were saying just this during the campaign and all of the people high on Obama asked us to stop killing their buzz?
Now that he's president and people are coming down back to reality, all I hear are Obama supporters trying to teach me how slow government is. Are you serious? I was trying to remind you (collectively) of this a couple months ago and you didn't want to hear any of it.
You have an interesting view of history. I'll avoid arguing it, but I wanted to point out that Alan Greenspan is no free market god. He headed up the market regulatory body, for chrissakes. He once had some strong free market and anti-inflationary views (he wrote a great paper on the relationship between a free people and a gold standard), but he changed his views suddenly when he was appointed to the Fed.
Yup, no law, etc. Whitehouse could have asked YouTube to omit the cookie for requests coming from Whitehouse.gov. Would have been pretty simple and based on previous concession they've gotten YouTube to make, it would have worked.
You get pretty fired up about something so simple.
Yes, you are right it isn't a federal agency who is doing the tracking. Congrats, you win. My point, like I said in the beginning, is that there's a reason the policy exists, and allowing YouTube to track visitors of federal websites is something prohibited by the spirit if not the letter of the policy. And, yes, it does require you to think more to discuss the reason behind the policy rather than just arguing semantics.
I didn't say anything about whether I cared personally whether I am tracked on federal websites. But, then again, you've shown your utter inability to comprehend the simplest of comments, so I am not surprised.
Oh I see. So you understand that increases in the cost of labor due to tax policy drives business offshore, but other causes for higher cost labor do not. Brilliant.
I've explained my point, and I trust that you have at least a 5th grade education. Either you agree or you don't, I don't really care which, and I don't have any interest in getting into the typical/. back and forth that never amounts to anything substantive... and which you are so obviously trying to bait me into.
I can't tell if you're bashing Verizon or actually recognizing that stupid government regulation affects market decisions and the quality of life of citizens.
Yeah, totally surprising that special interests swarm to the promise of free money. Totally surprising that corruption enters the game when tax money is used to pick winners and losers. Definitely not foreseeable at all. There definitely wasn't anyone who was warning against this before the bailouts.
Yeah, you're really still not thinking. Who cares if it's YouTube or some other organization, government or not. The point is that we have agreed that tracking the citizen's visits to government websites isn't the best idea in the world. If it's stored, it's discoverable.
Disagreeing with the policy in whole makes sense; agreeing with it in whole makes sense; making some arbitrary distinction between tracking visits of government websites by government itself and tracking by third party only makes sense to you.
You make it seem like the whitehouse.gov people have no choice in the matter; I guess I just "can't get it into my head"...
Slashdot Mirror
First thing I do after this plan is executed is open a business in Chicago that correlates the GPS trackers parents give their kids to the public cameras.
Ha! I love slashdot...
> Interestingly, it is when we have reduced these investments under the
> recent republican presidents, the economy takes a hit
Perhaps we should invest more in research on why correlation does not mean causation.
No, not all economists agree. Some economists don't buy Keynesian theory and believe that the market is the market and intervention decreases (not increases) efficiency.
Holy crap. Have we learned absolutely nothing? I know it's been a whole 6 months, but does anyone remember problems with us extending loans in order to make risky investments "less risky"?
Reducing the cost of capital does not affect the risk of the endeavor. It just shifts it from the person taking out the loan to the person giving the loan. If the person giving the loan is the government (or gets bailed out by the government), then this shifts risk from the individual investor TO EVERY TAXPAYER.
Does this sound at all familiar to you?
I'm sorry, because I know you meant well, but I get so tired of people looking only at the benefit of an action without any consideration for the cost. I don't think I'm being overdramatic when I say it's going to end up destroying this country http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Nice thought, but you didn't really explain why my tax dollars should go to open source. You didn't explain why open source hasn't eclipsed "traditional" license software, if it's superior. If you are as confident in open source as I am, then let's just break the barriers (including lobbying) in government to considering it as a fair option and let the market decide which is best.
For YOU or some government official to decide that open source is better than other options is arrogant, and it's decisions like that which have caused our government to make "investments" on inferior alternatives throughout modern (read: since the income tax) history.
> This seems far more reasonable than the tax-payer pays for software to be developed,
> gets nothing, or possibly some single version of some software.. Then a few years
> down the line the tax-payer needs to pay for the sofware they paid to be written yet
> again for version 2...
Um, what? Are you just speculating on possible scenarios, or are you trying to imply this actually happens? There is an initial version and then maintenance and new versions. Either the original vendor does all of this or it does some of it. It is not relevant whether the code is open source or not; the state has the right to modify it in every modern case of custom development I've ever heard of. The only difference is whether state A can freely give that product to state B without compensating the vendor. I know we all like to think in a vacuum, but I can tell you that if that is the contract stipulation, the only vendors willing to bid on the RFP will be low quality firms with no experience doing the same project in other states.
Capitalism works perfectly when the reward is a sense of doing the right thing.
Wait, actually, that's a different economic model, and it doesn't work too well.
Not knowing the details, I'm assuming it's similar to having a database of temps in C and a database of temps in F, if there weren't a nice little formula to convert the values.
Parent believes everyone should presume innocence until it is proven otherwise. For you to say he can't believe that because everyone is entitled to their opinion is a bit hypocritical.
Sounds like an arbitrary distinction. Whether ROI is achieved by re-sell or higher profit margins on related products is not really a meaningful distinction in any way I can figure.
I was joking, but really the analogy is "that pizza place won't deliver to me because I'm outside their range".
> just zero obligatory cost to user
What does that even mean? When the consumers decide to utilize a product, they pay. It's not obligatory, because they choose to purchase the service. If you're saying the consumers can "purchase" the service in this case and still not have to pay anything, you're wrong. See below.
> Google isn't truly free because you get AdSense on the right of every
> search, which are paid for by advertisers.
No, it's paid by users. If users do not buy more shit as a result of AdSense, then advertisers do not have any reason to pay for the advertising. The "oh we'll just support this free service with ads" model only works if the users end up paying for the service with their extra consumption. This is money they would not have paid if they hadn't used the service and seen the ad, by definition.
> Wikipedia is free but gets millions in donations from many sources.
From whom? Magical donation fairies? Again, this is a series of users paying for a service. We are only talking about models of enforceability here. In the Wikipedia donation model, they utilize ad campaigns that they hope will trigger an emotional response from people who value the service and essentially guilt them into paying for the service they thought was free. Are they "obligated" to donate? Are users "obligated" to click on ads. YES! If they don't, wikipedia and any other "free" service dies. The only difference you are making is with the individual user. You're saying (I think) that since the individual user can choose not to donate, then that is somehow different than a normal business model.
Sorry, it's not. Very few business models are constructed in a way where every consumer pays the same amount for their service. Look at insurance, the lottery, cable internet, any store that ever has a sale, etc.
Just to add another one: when you buy deodorant, you are paying for products taken for free by shoplifters.
> Nothing of use is truly free to produce, (see parent) but since the
> cost of disseminating digital services divides to almost nothing per
> client, only a few of those customers need to support the provider
> to keep everyone in "free" service.
Having x/n users pay the cost and (n-x)/n users skate free is not any different from requiring every user to pay 1/n of the cost, except that there are almost no businesses where every user provides the exact same profit margin.
> When I can try a fully-functional product/service before investing a
> dime, I am much more likely to pay/donate than if I am required to
> pay even nominal cost upfront.
Again, this is nothing new. Right now I have a $60k piece of software on my laptop that I'm evaluating for a client. I didn't pay a dime for it, because the company knows precisely what you state above.
Um, what? Hate to stomp on your analogy, especially since you got modded up for it, but... do you have any idea how much the government pays private contractors to build and maintain roads? Millions and millions of dollars.
You're talking about two totally different things: cost centers and free software.
Amen. The jerk who owns the grocery store down the street won't let me into his store because he says I'm a thief. If he's not willing to sell his stuff to me, I'll just steal it.
Cost a ton to have your competitors able to reach a higher percentage of the audience than you.
And where were you when reasonable people were saying just this during the campaign and all of the people high on Obama asked us to stop killing their buzz?
Now that he's president and people are coming down back to reality, all I hear are Obama supporters trying to teach me how slow government is. Are you serious? I was trying to remind you (collectively) of this a couple months ago and you didn't want to hear any of it.
You have an interesting view of history. I'll avoid arguing it, but I wanted to point out that Alan Greenspan is no free market god. He headed up the market regulatory body, for chrissakes. He once had some strong free market and anti-inflationary views (he wrote a great paper on the relationship between a free people and a gold standard), but he changed his views suddenly when he was appointed to the Fed.
Yup, no law, etc. Whitehouse could have asked YouTube to omit the cookie for requests coming from Whitehouse.gov. Would have been pretty simple and based on previous concession they've gotten YouTube to make, it would have worked.
You get pretty fired up about something so simple.
Yes, you are right it isn't a federal agency who is doing the tracking. Congrats, you win. My point, like I said in the beginning, is that there's a reason the policy exists, and allowing YouTube to track visitors of federal websites is something prohibited by the spirit if not the letter of the policy. And, yes, it does require you to think more to discuss the reason behind the policy rather than just arguing semantics.
I didn't say anything about whether I cared personally whether I am tracked on federal websites. But, then again, you've shown your utter inability to comprehend the simplest of comments, so I am not surprised.
Oh I see. So you understand that increases in the cost of labor due to tax policy drives business offshore, but other causes for higher cost labor do not. Brilliant.
I've explained my point, and I trust that you have at least a 5th grade education. Either you agree or you don't, I don't really care which, and I don't have any interest in getting into the typical /. back and forth that never amounts to anything substantive... and which you are so obviously trying to bait me into.
I can't tell if you're bashing Verizon or actually recognizing that stupid government regulation affects market decisions and the quality of life of citizens.
Yeah, totally surprising that special interests swarm to the promise of free money. Totally surprising that corruption enters the game when tax money is used to pick winners and losers. Definitely not foreseeable at all. There definitely wasn't anyone who was warning against this before the bailouts.
Yeah, you're really still not thinking. Who cares if it's YouTube or some other organization, government or not. The point is that we have agreed that tracking the citizen's visits to government websites isn't the best idea in the world. If it's stored, it's discoverable.
Disagreeing with the policy in whole makes sense; agreeing with it in whole makes sense; making some arbitrary distinction between tracking visits of government websites by government itself and tracking by third party only makes sense to you.
You make it seem like the whitehouse.gov people have no choice in the matter; I guess I just "can't get it into my head"...