I'm sure that if they're ever wrong, and put the wrong guy up on the billboard, they'll put up a correction later so the guy can clear his name in the public eye.
Optimists do have one definite advantage when it comes to, say, starting a business.
A pessimist knows that he'll fail 9 times out of 10, so he doesn't bother trying in the first place.
An optimist, even after repeated failure, remains convinced that this time he'll succeed...
...and eventually, if he's a reasonably intelligent optimist - and sometimes even if he's not - he does succeed.
Lifetime score for starting a successful business:
Pessimist: 0
Optimist: 1
It's not always true, and sometimes an optimist with just the right dose of pessimism and paranoia can succeed spectacularly (c.f. Bill Gates, Andrew Groves), but your average successful business owner was once an optimistic failure.
This would be the perfect external journal device for databases and filesystems like XFS. Transactions would be guaranteed and super-fast, and could be lazily shuffled out to slower, bigger disk.
In a Government of Canada discussion of the Canadian copyright act, I found this:
"Infringement of the author's moral right occurs only if the work is... used in association with a product, service, cause or institution that prejudices the author's reputation or honour."
It'd be a stretch, yes. However, one can imagine a judge at least taking into consideration the arguments of someone who was a member of a strict religious community who was facing shame or banishment from community members because they had created something which was being "used for the Devil's work" by a store that opened on Sunday. The judge might or might not grant the request, but they'd consider it.
I'm surprised no-one has pointed this out yet: ZFS can't be used as a SAN filesystem. For that you need something like Redhat's GFS (formerly from Sistina), PVFS, or one of a number of commercial products.
From the ZFS FAQ:
Q: Suppose I have three E450s. Would ZFS allow me to integrate storage across all three boxes into one big "poor man's SAN"?
A: No, ZFS is a local filesystem (for the time being). To access storage attached to a different host, use NFS.
According to "The New New Thing", the explosion in engineering income during the bubble happened because engineers took over companies for the first time and rewarded each other.
This is what managers usually do for each other. It's what they're best at.
It turns out that inside the game, counterparty risk is tremendous. In fact, entire banks will suddenly disappear. Or banks will simply renege on obligations without recourse.
This is not a sign of a pyramid scheme, it's a sign of underdeveloped institutions. It happens in most societies which are first developing banks and stock markets. (Shouldn't a finance writer remember John Law and the Banque Générale?)
Banking institutions develop in roughly three stages.
First there's the banks-disappearing stage (John Law et al), where fabulous returns are promised, but half the time you never see your money again. Europe went through this stage in the early 1700s.
Then there's the Neoclassical stage: Banks build impressive buildings to let people know that they plan to be around for a long time, and to give the impression that they have been around for a long time. This stage arrived in China in the 1920s, when governments weren't stable enough to provide client protection, so banks had to give the impression that they could shoulder the burden all on their own. An impressive building and serious/professional bank managers/tellers help maintain the impression, which is critical if people who got burned in the first stage are going to be convinced to bring their money out from under their mattresses. (Banks built in the 1930s in small-town America have much the same look.)
Finally, there's the government regulation/deposit protection stage. Banks can tuck themselves into the corner beside the Starbucks and the tellers can chew bubble gum, because we know that the government will, most of the time, enforce regulations needed to keep our deposits safe. We don't need the impressive facades anymore, because we trust the institutions.
It sounds like Second Life is still at the first stage. Over time, if the economy continues to develop, expect the Neoclassical stage to develop. Certain players, or groups of players, will build up a reputation for dependability; they will enhance that reputation with professional presentation. Will they build banks with fluted Corinthian columns? Maybe not, but they'll have something equivalent.
Interestingly, these trades tended to net returns of right around 4%, which was the prevailing dollar deposit rate.
This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an apparent arbitrage opportunity that turned out not to be an actual arbitrage opportunity, but, rather, a fairly conservative, boring investment.
Of course, an approach sometimes used in treating lupus (see the section "Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Diseases") could always be used to overcome the autoimmune problem for good - destroy the immune system and repopulate it from scratch. A bit dangerous, though.
No rejection problems with your own-tissue-derived cells.
Actually, since diabetes is an auto-immune disease, islet cells even from from your own body will be rejected. That's how Type I diabetes happens in the first place: Your immune system identifies your islet cells as invaders and destroys them.
With our proven experience in successfully occupying other countries (Germany, Japan), why did we stumble so badly in Iraq?
Germany and Japan had both been functioning democracies for a significant period (10+ years) before they were taken over by the militarists who started WWII. All that the US had to do after the war was support and help stabilize democratic forces that were already there.
Iraq has never been a democracy. That this experiment would go batshit has been obvious from the beginning, partially because of that fact. Self-government cannot be imposed on a people, whether the imposed government consists of ballots and elections or not. It's called self-government for a reason. It's not something that can be forced to happen.
The galeon 1.2 series (don't know if it's in the newer ones) has a nice hack to get around this: A location bar erase button. Highlight your URL, click the erase button, paste it.
It doesn't deal with the underlying problem, but it's a very handy workaround.
No, really, he was. If he showed up today and started preaching his "give up all and follow me" schtick, he'd be condemned everywhere from the pages of the Wall Street Journal to fundamentalist pulpits across the land.
He probably wouldn't care about intellectual property and the RIAA and DMCA and MPAA, but he'd definitely condemn the hard-working, industrious Western world. You notice how he describes a man who "stores up things for himself"? He's describing a capitalist there, an entrepreneur - and condemning him.
No offence to anyone who believes he's the Son of God, but Jesus was a dirty hippy.
Re:JOE and I go way back...
on
JOE Hits 3.0
·
· Score: 1
And it's still great for that. I use mutt on a shell account over a modem, and joe is the only really good editor I've found for composing emails in that situation.
Its best feature? Intelligent reformatting of quoted text. It'll reformat this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line that's going to wrap funny in > > > any other mail client just because it's so long
to this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line > > > that's going to wrap funny in any > > > other mail client just because it's > > > so long
with a single key-stroke, instead of doing unintelligent word-wrap that results in this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line that's > going to wrap funny in > > > any other mail client just because it's so > long
or this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line that's going to wrap funny in > > > any other mail client just because it's so long
I'm anal about the appearance of my email, so this matters to me. Plus, like the poster above said, it edits fast over a slow modem connection. Very intelligent terminal handling.
I did say almost fits the definition of public good, because I suspected there might be complications in the definition I wasn't aware of, such as those you've raised. Thanks for your elaborations.
I think point (c), "produced outside the market", is what I'm trying to predict: That goods which fit (a) and (b) will tend to become public goods. Or, rather, that's one solution that's available and reasonable - a solution which China, Japan and South Korea have taken here - just as a mercenary naval defence which allows selective bombardment of houses which haven't paid their dues is an available and reasonable solution to the free-rider problem in national defence as a solution equivalent to copyrights.
In any event, it's quite possible that you're right and software doesn't fit the strictest definition of a public good. But it's not entirely not a public good, either, and the public good solution to software production may be one that's taken more and more often. Like the production of knowledge in general, it sits in-between: Yes, it's possible for private entities to produce knowledge and keep control of it via trade secrets, patents, and copyright, but it's also reasonable and reasonably efficient for the government to support research institutions and universities that make their knowledge freely available and avoid the costs of enforcement.
Ah, but in this case, "freely copyable" refers only to physical costs, not to potential legal costs introduced by copyright and licenses. Software fits the definition.
A good does not have to be free-as-in-speech to be a public good - and, in fact, limitations on free speech, in the form of copyright protection and the like, are one way to attempt to deal with the free-rider problem introduced by freely-as-in-beer-copyable goods so as to allow them to be funded without direct government support. It's called the "monopoly solution" to the public goods problem, and it has all the difficulties one usually associates with monopolies.
Wikipedia has a pretty good, if short, summary of public goods and the monopoly solution.
Being virtually freely copyable, software is coming close to fitting economists' definition of a public good - something that can't be provided to one person without providing it to everyone.
Government action is the only sustainable way to fund public goods, because of the free rider problem. This announcement was only a matter of time - and it's only the beginning.
Very good point. I notice that many of my IT colleagues lack assertiveness - and they tend to be the least happy ones. If you don't feel you can effectively change the things that bother you, the resentment builds up and gnaws at you. If you feel your life is run by PHBs whose minds can't be changed, you will not be happy. If you're constantly tip-toeing around egos for fear of being fired, you're not going to feel good about yourself or what you do.
I wonder how many techs would be more content - and more in control of their own destinies - if they'd had some assertiveness and social skills training.
Impossible to protect against brand new viruses immediately? Not quite: Strip every attachment that's executable in Windows. It's not 100% foolproof, but it goes a long way. That's what make Anomy Sanitizer so useful.
Knowledge in India exploded at about the same time it did in China and Greece - a hundred years either side of 500BC - and for the same reason: Urbanization. The age that produced Panini also produced Aristotle and Confucius.
Yep... Thomas Watson is just another one of those super-competitive bastards who ran a big evil company, doing everything possible to drive competitors out of business and stifle innovation that wouldn't profit his company and himself. Rockefeller, George Eastman (Kodak), Alfred Sloan (General Motors), Thomas Watson, Bill Gates - all used the most gouging and heavy-handed practices they could legally get away with to maximize profit and crush competition.
Another tactic these companies engaged in (and still do) was patenting innovations not to use them but simply so that competitors couldn't. How many good ideas - that some nimble little company could've at least tried to succeed with - have been buried in the bowels of these dinosaurs?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure that if they're ever wrong, and put the wrong guy up on the billboard, they'll put up a correction later so the guy can clear his name in the public eye.
I'm sure of it.
Yeah.
...pretty soon it starts looking like a hammer.
Optimists do have one definite advantage when it comes to, say, starting a business.
A pessimist knows that he'll fail 9 times out of 10, so he doesn't bother trying in the first place.
An optimist, even after repeated failure, remains convinced that this time he'll succeed...
...and eventually, if he's a reasonably intelligent optimist - and sometimes even if he's not - he does succeed.
Lifetime score for starting a successful business:
Pessimist: 0
Optimist: 1
It's not always true, and sometimes an optimist with just the right dose of pessimism and paranoia can succeed spectacularly (c.f. Bill Gates, Andrew Groves), but your average successful business owner was once an optimistic failure.
This would be the perfect external journal device for databases and filesystems like XFS. Transactions would be guaranteed and super-fast, and could be lazily shuffled out to slower, bigger disk.
In a Government of Canada discussion of the Canadian copyright act, I found this:
"Infringement of the author's moral right occurs only if the work is... used in association with a product, service, cause or institution that prejudices the author's reputation or honour."
It'd be a stretch, yes. However, one can imagine a judge at least taking into consideration the arguments of someone who was a member of a strict religious community who was facing shame or banishment from community members because they had created something which was being "used for the Devil's work" by a store that opened on Sunday. The judge might or might not grant the request, but they'd consider it.
If you live in a jurisdiction that recognizes moral rights to copyrighted work separate from copying rights, you just might be able to.
From the ZFS FAQ:
Q: Suppose I have three E450s. Would ZFS allow me to integrate storage across all three boxes into one big "poor man's SAN"?
A: No, ZFS is a local filesystem (for the time being). To access storage attached to a different host, use NFS.
According to "The New New Thing", the explosion in engineering income during the bubble happened because engineers took over companies for the first time and rewarded each other.
This is what managers usually do for each other. It's what they're best at.
The reign of the engineers didn't last long.
This is not a sign of a pyramid scheme, it's a sign of underdeveloped institutions. It happens in most societies which are first developing banks and stock markets. (Shouldn't a finance writer remember John Law and the Banque Générale?)
Banking institutions develop in roughly three stages.
First there's the banks-disappearing stage (John Law et al), where fabulous returns are promised, but half the time you never see your money again. Europe went through this stage in the early 1700s.
Then there's the Neoclassical stage: Banks build impressive buildings to let people know that they plan to be around for a long time, and to give the impression that they have been around for a long time. This stage arrived in China in the 1920s, when governments weren't stable enough to provide client protection, so banks had to give the impression that they could shoulder the burden all on their own. An impressive building and serious/professional bank managers/tellers help maintain the impression, which is critical if people who got burned in the first stage are going to be convinced to bring their money out from under their mattresses. (Banks built in the 1930s in small-town America have much the same look.)
Finally, there's the government regulation/deposit protection stage. Banks can tuck themselves into the corner beside the Starbucks and the tellers can chew bubble gum, because we know that the government will, most of the time, enforce regulations needed to keep our deposits safe. We don't need the impressive facades anymore, because we trust the institutions.
It sounds like Second Life is still at the first stage. Over time, if the economy continues to develop, expect the Neoclassical stage to develop. Certain players, or groups of players, will build up a reputation for dependability; they will enhance that reputation with professional presentation. Will they build banks with fluted Corinthian columns? Maybe not, but they'll have something equivalent.
This is not a pyramid scheme. This is an apparent arbitrage opportunity that turned out not to be an actual arbitrage opportunity, but, rather, a fairly conservative, boring investment.Of course, an approach sometimes used in treating lupus (see the section "Hematopoietic Stem Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Diseases") could always be used to overcome the autoimmune problem for good - destroy the immune system and repopulate it from scratch. A bit dangerous, though.
Actually, since diabetes is an auto-immune disease, islet cells even from from your own body will be rejected. That's how Type I diabetes happens in the first place: Your immune system identifies your islet cells as invaders and destroys them.
Like fusion, the cure for cancer is only a few years away.
With our proven experience in successfully occupying other countries (Germany, Japan), why did we stumble so badly in Iraq?
Germany and Japan had both been functioning democracies for a significant period (10+ years) before they were taken over by the militarists who started WWII. All that the US had to do after the war was support and help stabilize democratic forces that were already there.
Iraq has never been a democracy. That this experiment would go batshit has been obvious from the beginning, partially because of that fact. Self-government cannot be imposed on a people, whether the imposed government consists of ballots and elections or not. It's called self-government for a reason. It's not something that can be forced to happen.
You lied to me, Slashdot troll, you lied!
Next someone will tell me Natalie Portman doesn't have any hot grits down her pants.
I'm losing my innocence.
The galeon 1.2 series (don't know if it's in the newer ones) has a nice hack to get around this: A location bar erase button. Highlight your URL, click the erase button, paste it.
It doesn't deal with the underlying problem, but it's a very handy workaround.
No, really, he was. If he showed up today and started preaching his "give up all and follow me" schtick, he'd be condemned everywhere from the pages of the Wall Street Journal to fundamentalist pulpits across the land.
He probably wouldn't care about intellectual property and the RIAA and DMCA and MPAA, but he'd definitely condemn the hard-working, industrious Western world. You notice how he describes a man who "stores up things for himself"? He's describing a capitalist there, an entrepreneur - and condemning him.
No offence to anyone who believes he's the Son of God, but Jesus was a dirty hippy.
And it's still great for that. I use mutt on a shell account over a modem, and joe is the only really good editor I've found for composing emails in that situation.
Its best feature? Intelligent reformatting of quoted text. It'll reformat this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line that's going to wrap funny in
> > > any other mail client just because it's so long
to this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line
> > > that's going to wrap funny in any
> > > other mail client just because it's
> > > so long
with a single key-stroke, instead of doing unintelligent word-wrap that results in this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line that's
> going to wrap funny in
> > > any other mail client just because it's so
> long
or this:
> > > Pretend this is a really long line
that's going to wrap funny in > > > any
other mail client just because it's so long
I'm anal about the appearance of my email, so this matters to me. Plus, like the poster above said, it edits fast over a slow modem connection. Very intelligent terminal handling.
Andrew Klaassen
I did say almost fits the definition of public good, because I suspected there might be complications in the definition I wasn't aware of, such as those you've raised. Thanks for your elaborations.
I think point (c), "produced outside the market", is what I'm trying to predict: That goods which fit (a) and (b) will tend to become public goods. Or, rather, that's one solution that's available and reasonable - a solution which China, Japan and South Korea have taken here - just as a mercenary naval defence which allows selective bombardment of houses which haven't paid their dues is an available and reasonable solution to the free-rider problem in national defence as a solution equivalent to copyrights.
In any event, it's quite possible that you're right and software doesn't fit the strictest definition of a public good. But it's not entirely not a public good, either, and the public good solution to software production may be one that's taken more and more often. Like the production of knowledge in general, it sits in-between: Yes, it's possible for private entities to produce knowledge and keep control of it via trade secrets, patents, and copyright, but it's also reasonable and reasonably efficient for the government to support research institutions and universities that make their knowledge freely available and avoid the costs of enforcement.
Andrew Klaassen
Ah, but in this case, "freely copyable" refers only to physical costs, not to potential legal costs introduced by copyright and licenses. Software fits the definition.
A good does not have to be free-as-in-speech to be a public good - and, in fact, limitations on free speech, in the form of copyright protection and the like, are one way to attempt to deal with the free-rider problem introduced by freely-as-in-beer-copyable goods so as to allow them to be funded without direct government support. It's called the "monopoly solution" to the public goods problem, and it has all the difficulties one usually associates with monopolies.
Wikipedia has a pretty good, if short, summary of public goods and the monopoly solution.
Andrew Klaassen
Being virtually freely copyable, software is coming close to fitting economists' definition of a public good - something that can't be provided to one person without providing it to everyone.
Government action is the only sustainable way to fund public goods, because of the free rider problem. This announcement was only a matter of time - and it's only the beginning.
Andrew Klaassen
Very good point. I notice that many of my IT colleagues lack assertiveness - and they tend to be the least happy ones. If you don't feel you can effectively change the things that bother you, the resentment builds up and gnaws at you. If you feel your life is run by PHBs whose minds can't be changed, you will not be happy. If you're constantly tip-toeing around egos for fear of being fired, you're not going to feel good about yourself or what you do.
I wonder how many techs would be more content - and more in control of their own destinies - if they'd had some assertiveness and social skills training.
Andrew Klaassen
Impossible to protect against brand new viruses immediately? Not quite: Strip every attachment that's executable in Windows. It's not 100% foolproof, but it goes a long way. That's what make Anomy Sanitizer so useful.
Andrew Klaassen
Which is why I'm going back to an old-fashioned straight razor.
(Dependable *and* sexy. w00t!)
Andrew Klaassen
2500 years ago is 500 BC, not 2500 BC.
Knowledge in India exploded at about the same time it did in China and Greece - a hundred years either side of 500BC - and for the same reason: Urbanization. The age that produced Panini also produced Aristotle and Confucius.
Andrew Klaassen
Yep... Thomas Watson is just another one of those super-competitive bastards who ran a big evil company, doing everything possible to drive competitors out of business and stifle innovation that wouldn't profit his company and himself. Rockefeller, George Eastman (Kodak), Alfred Sloan (General Motors), Thomas Watson, Bill Gates - all used the most gouging and heavy-handed practices they could legally get away with to maximize profit and crush competition.
Another tactic these companies engaged in (and still do) was patenting innovations not to use them but simply so that competitors couldn't. How many good ideas - that some nimble little company could've at least tried to succeed with - have been buried in the bowels of these dinosaurs?
Andrew Klaassen