I mean to say Oxford American English Dictionary. The grand OED itself says:
2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)
It goes on to note this usage has been around since at least the 17th century.
If it's been around that long, it's probably not irony any more. I bet it's nothing more than rustic by now.
I must confess, I am not familiar with the Australian popular history of their treatment of Aboriginals. But in America, it seems to me that there is a very dim view on the treatment of Native Americans. Aside from the feel-good stories told during Thanksgiving, popular culture seems to view early Americans as barbaric towards the native peoples. I welcome further input on the subject, in any case.
Your generation may see this as the prevailing opinion, but mine grew up playing Cowboys and Indians, glorifying John Wayne and the Marlboro Man and shouting 'Geronimo!' as we leaped from tree branches and walls. In my generation, Indians were sneaky bastards who'd slip into the camp at night, kill your children, rape your wife and cut your throat before you woke.
This kind of makes the GP's case - governments and cultures create their own narratives, filtering past events through them in whatever way suits them best at the moment. Since the 1970s, it's fallen out of vogue to see our First Nations as villains. The process started with revisionist histories like Dee Brown's moving book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and with movies like Little Big Man, released the same year.
By the time I was in my twenties, the subject was safe enough to provide movie pabulum like Dances With Wolves.
But here's the difference between totalitarian regimes and democratic ones: In the case of the history of the American West, the changing social perceptions were driven from the bottom up, in many cases by Native activists and people sympathetic to their cause. In totalitarian regimes, most 'historical drift' is imposed, top-down, according to the political needs of the regime of the day. The events at Tiananmen Square will not be safe for public consumption until the powers-that-be decide, and no sooner.
Admittedly without reading TFA, that sounds like his point - that what "quants" should be doing is developing good empirically good heuristic models rather than wanking over what are essentially hypothetical analytical ones based on complete SWAG parameters, where the parameters supplied by salesmen will invevitably be optimistic best case ones (and that's putting it charitably).
That's fine, I'm not disputing that. What I'm suggesting, though, is that no amount of empirical testing will save you from someone who just plain lies with their input data - and that part is out of the hands of the people formulating the equations.
I don't for a second want to suggest that there's not room for improvement on the risk-measurement side. What worries me is that improvements on that side might be touted as a 'solution' to the problem, when the real problem is people willing to lie to make money. Hence my stated fear that Wilmott's efforts might be obscuring the fundamental problem.
I'm a long way from New York, so someone correct me if I'm wrong[*], but I've always understood the problem to lie more with the people feeding data into the equations, rather than with the equations themselves.
Now, I accept that risk calculations consisted of a great deal of voodoo because, as Taleb tells us, they tended to ignore 'Black Swan' events (where the 1 in a million catastrophe wasn't going to happen just yet) and saw patterns where only chaos existed, but as I understand it, the core of the problem was simple greed: money-hungry mortgage and securities dealers deliberately feeding bad data into the system.
So-called quants may be decidedly imperfect, but if someone's willing to game the system to make a buck, nothing the quant does can stop it.
If Wilmott doesn't have an answer to that, I fear that his efforts will only obscure the real problem.
Not lawsuits - workarounds. For those of us who remember, multi-tasking (after a fashion) was made possible on Windows 3.1 via the TSR - Terminate-and-Stay-Resident programs that left a stub, inert but still in RAM - that allowed a limited task-switching capability.
Those of us who _actually_ remember know you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Heh, yeah. My memory isn't what it used to be. I'm not sure I could have got more details wrong without actually trying. Sorry.
If that happens and they don't make it VERY clear before purchase, with a sticker on the machine or some other obvious and hard to miss label then i can see this ending up a good case for a class action lawsuit.
It grieves me immensely to say this, but nothing Microsoft does will stop netbooks from shipping with Windows installed. No amount of self-inflicted sabotage can compensate for the irrational loss aversion that characterises most computer users. They just don't feel they can afford to be without Windows.
... And for the next few years, 'Windows' will mean Windows 7.
And by what metrics do MSFT decide what constitutes a "program"? Will IE not count but FF or Opera will? What about WMP Vs Media Monkey or iTunes? Windows Firewall VS Comodo or Zonealarm? Sounds to me if like in TFA they stick with the 3 app limit they are just begging for a whole mess of lawsuits.
Not lawsuits - workarounds. For those of us who remember, multi-tasking (after a fashion) was made possible on Windows 3.1 via the TSR - Terminate-and-Stay-Resident programs that left a stub, inert but still in RAM - that allowed a limited task-switching capability.
In Windows 7, I expect we'll see 'broker' services, similar to the ones that some software makers (e.g. Adobe) use to break themselves out of the IE sandbox and to interact with the system. A small broker service that maintains state for a given application will be enough to allow fairly quick task-switching while fooling Windows 7 into believing that there are only 3 apps running at a time.
For my part, I find this scenario repugnant. Whether I like it or not, though, spending time and effort working around designed-in technical limitations that have everything to do with marketing and nothing whatsoever to do with actual technical capability... well, that's been the geek's lot in life ever since login limits on the old proprietary Unix mainframes.
And as much as I decry such phenomena, I still think it's important to recollect that it's circumstances like these that led to the creation of the Free Software Foundation. We will see salutary side-effects in such an environment. If all goes well, it might well fuel an entirely new generation of Stallmans.
We shouldn't need another generation of Stallmans. But if history is any guide, they aren't obsolete yet.
Am I the only one who thinks this is just some prank pulled by some kid with an inkjet printer and some label paper? It would take 2 minutes to make that sticker and just slap it on a few urinals for giggles.
No way it could be a fake. If somebody tried to plant those stickers the urinal cameras would have identified him immedi.... Oh. Hang on....
The U.S. Navy has developed autonomous long range torpedo technology. In a completely unrelated article, Rutgers students announce that they have lost all contact with their AUV and have offered no explanation as to why....
"It was worth the risk," said Rutgers spokesman. "No price is too high if it finally gets us out of New Jersey."
I know this case is different, seeing as YouTube may be outside of the Country. But it does highlight the absurdity of Government being able to hold copyright.
I'm actually more disturbed by their selective application of copyright. In all the years since Parliament was first televised, I have never once seen a copyright attribution on the television news reports that make liberal (sorry) use of this very same footage. Other third party footage is always attributed and often licensed.
Full disclosure: I worked for a few years with a company that provided materials for the Parliament of Canada using, among other things, the Parliamentary Hansard, vote results, Committee minutes and reports and much more. We never paid them a penny in royalties for the information and research products that we marketed to the public based on these materials. In fact, they paid us to produce much of it.
If I recall correctly (it's been a decade since I worked there), there was no copyright notice on the materials, though they were clearly labeled as originating from the Parliament of Canada, and bore the Canadian Coat of Arms.
Like Richard Stallman said at the WSIS Tunis panel discussion 2005: This is electronic colonization, i.e. the Africans are supposed to pay for foreign products and remain ignorant and dependent.
He's right, too. I live in a Least Developed Country and write a weekly ICT-related column in one of our national newspapers. When I reported on a closed-door meeting between Microsoft and the Ministry of Education, I made more or less the same observation.
A brief quote:
The world of IT is undergoing the same shift in emphasis and momentum as industrialism underwent in the late 19th Century. Having reached critical mass in the developed world, technology was exported to the developing world, most notably into India, Japan and, to a lesser degree, China. They profited immensely, but the social cost was high.
It was largely due to technological mastery that the great colonial powers managed to control huge parts of the globe. Their communications and logistical capabilities were well beyond anything their opponents could muster, and their industrialised military ensured that they dominated wherever they set foot.
In fairness, this latest excursion into the 'wilds' of the developing world is much more benign than the conquests of the 19th century. Nonetheless, the goals are the same: expansion of business opportunities and profits through the creation of new products and markets.
It's not necessary - or possible - to pass judgement on the process as a whole. Regardless of how we might feel about it, it's happening now, and no one can stop it. This strategic change in approach offers Vanuatu a valuable opportunity and at one and the same time creates challenges that need to be understood and addressed.
I didn't think that was particularly incendiary, but the very next working day, I got a call from a very angry Ministry worker, demanding to know who'd spoken to me. Later that week, a half-page rebuttal was published in the same paper, loudly decrying the use of the term 'Colonialism' in relation to software licensing. They claimed that it was inflammatory and prejudiced.
Interestingly, they didn't refute a single argument I used to support my use of the term.
This assumes that you have the skills to correct the problem yourself. Otherwise you are still waiting for someone somewhere to fix the problem.
And you're assuming that knowledge and ability are somehow static.
I find this particular line of logic particularly irksome. That's mostly because nearly every single thing I've learned about computers, I've learned under my own steam. There's no mystical Linux Club where knowledge of systems and how they work are magically and instantly conferred on members.
There is, however, a school of thought that encourages lifting oneself up by one's bootstraps, and which (handsomely) rewards curiousity and initiative.
And lest I be accused of arrogance toward those who haven't had the same education and opportunities as I've had, I should mention that I'm putting my money where my mouth is: I work full-time in the developing world, and over the last 5 years or so have watched Linux begin to flourish on desktops and servers in the country where I've taken up residence.
The hardest part of building acceptance for FOSS generally and Linux in particular has been getting people to move away from the perspective that working in IT consists of nothing more than learning a series of incantations to be performed when your Windows machine inevitably goes FUBAR.
It's taken time, and the work isn't nearly done yet, but I'm gratified by the knowledge that, of the young IT apprentices I've taken on over the years, nearly every single one of them holds a responsible professional position managing high-end equipment, a significant part of which is running (or running on) FOSS software. Not one of them had any formal computer training before I happened along. For most of them, their employment opportunities were effectively nil.
Based on my personal and professional experience, therefore, I have to conclude that your argument is specious, misleading and counter-productive.
Clearing the rights isn't an issue with the mass of amateur youtube uploads and the like; but costs of delivery are (at best) constant across the world(at worst, they are likely to be rather higher in poorer areas) and expected revenue certainly isn't constant.
NOTE: This post may appear to be a trifle bitter in tone. That's because it is.
Let me speak from my personal experience of living these last 5+ years in a developing country: It's the developed world's own goddamn fault that we don't pay for things online.
The cost of delivering the content is constant for the provider. The cost for the receiver, on the other hand, is insanely high. I'm sharing a 128Kbps ADSL line with 2 others right now, at a total price of about US $55 per month. A 256Kbps line costs US $150. A 512Kbps line is about US $350 (recently reduced from $440). The only reason for this pricing is a monopoly on Internet services jointly controlled by France Telecom and Cable & Wireless.
For reference, the monthly minimum wage (for the minority who actually have work) is about US $250.
But even if we could download things, we couldn't pay for them online, because credit cards are virtually impossible to get from local banks. And by local banks, I mean of course franchises of Australian giants ANZ and Westpac.
We can't get credit cards because we have bad credit ratings. We have bad credit ratings because the average interest rate for a first-time borrower is 23%.
But most of us can't even get a first loan because the one collateral we have, customary land holdings, is not accepted unless it's been leased to someone or commercialised in some way. Most people are not willing to sell their birthright - and their children's only wealth - just for a good credit rating.
But even if we could get a local credit card, the majority of sites online won't accept them because of the risk, coming as it does from a country with (surprise!) poor credit history.
Debit services like Paypal don't even know we exist. Suddenly, the fact that our banks are franchises of regional giants has no bearing on anything.
To sum up: So you don't want to let me access your content? How terribly surprisingly. Fuck you very much and have a nice fucking day.
Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank and is still incredibly profitable. It has a long way to fall. It could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in remote danger, and you never know... they could reinvent themselves as a shaved-ice company at the last minute.
It's good to see a hint that this fall might finally be starting, but even in this economy, it will be a long time before Microsoft dies.
The detail that I found most interesting is that their revenues dropped by only 6%, but that knocked their earnings down by 32%. This means that, if the company continues to face revenue pressures, they'll continue to spend a lot of cash. Unless they take steps to reduce their costs, they're going to burn up a lot of capital just to continue existing.
The solution is pretty straightforward, of course: Cut costs. But corporations tend to be most vulnerable when their managers start applying their Ivy League MBA wisdom to this excruciatingly difficult problem. Expect turmoil, a good deal of churn, and a lot of their top talent to start looking for greener pastures.
None of this necessarily changes your conclusion that Microsoft is going to be around for a while yet. But what interests me most is what kind of Microsoft will survive.
See some sort of pattern? People will pay for the content if it is valuable enough.
Well put, but I wish more people understood what 'valuable' really means.
People everywhere get that supply and demand is fundamentally different on the Web, but they get the emphasis entirely wrong. I've written about it in more detail elsewhere, but here's a quick summary:
You can't just arbitrarily limit supply and expect it to magically increase in value. The mechanics of digital media make that impossible. You have to have something that's inherently valuable in the first place.
For most people, the generic fluff that fills up 90% of their local newspaper is not something they would have paid for, if they'd had the choice. On the Web, they have that choice, and they don't pay.
I write for two newspapers, and also publish online. I'm sympathetic to the plight of the traditional dailies and weeklies. I just wish they'd get a clue.
Agreed. My knee-jerk reaction was "how dare they!", but after reading the article it sounds like a more realistic approach than the AP has taken.
I don't think the solution is bad in principle. I'm sure that in practice, however, it would be terrible.
Among the potential problems:
Creation of an RIAA-like organisation which, not coincidentally, requires a certain amount of the funds it recoups in order to manage its own operations.
Legitimacy granted by advertisers to such an organisation would encourage all parties to 'simplify' payments to such 'rights managers'.
For small blog authors, chasing up these revenues would be onerous. Larger distributors of web content, on the other hand, would benefit from this. Yet another mechanism to keep the small guy in his place.
Nonetheless, membership in such an organisation (because of course, authors would have to register to be eligible for repayment) would become a requirement.
Put simply, I'm worried about mission creep. A good idea becomes an institution, and we see the little guy suffering once again because large organisations prefer to deal with large organisations.
Most - but not all - organisations handling royalty payments are built in such a way that small fry don't get a fair shake. They have a relatively small voice in policy decisions, and inevitably get shouted down by corporate interests.
This group may claim to speak on behalf of bloggers like me whose content gets copied all the time, but I can't see it working out to my benefit. All I can see is yet another group empowering themselves at my expense.
This is what i was thinking when i read this: that you really have to do ultra-low-power, ie fully ARM processors and SSD/flash so you can run on ~5-10 watts
Agreed. Given the output of typical small-scale power generation & storage schemes, 5-10 watts really is about the most you can manage if you want full-time operation.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean to say Oxford American English Dictionary. The grand OED itself says:
2. fig. A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In F. ironie du sort.)
It goes on to note this usage has been around since at least the 17th century.
If it's been around that long, it's probably not irony any more. I bet it's nothing more than rustic by now.
/me ducks and runs
I must confess, I am not familiar with the Australian popular history of their treatment of Aboriginals. But in America, it seems to me that there is a very dim view on the treatment of Native Americans. Aside from the feel-good stories told during Thanksgiving, popular culture seems to view early Americans as barbaric towards the native peoples. I welcome further input on the subject, in any case.
Your generation may see this as the prevailing opinion, but mine grew up playing Cowboys and Indians, glorifying John Wayne and the Marlboro Man and shouting 'Geronimo!' as we leaped from tree branches and walls. In my generation, Indians were sneaky bastards who'd slip into the camp at night, kill your children, rape your wife and cut your throat before you woke.
This kind of makes the GP's case - governments and cultures create their own narratives, filtering past events through them in whatever way suits them best at the moment. Since the 1970s, it's fallen out of vogue to see our First Nations as villains. The process started with revisionist histories like Dee Brown's moving book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and with movies like Little Big Man, released the same year.
By the time I was in my twenties, the subject was safe enough to provide movie pabulum like Dances With Wolves.
But here's the difference between totalitarian regimes and democratic ones: In the case of the history of the American West, the changing social perceptions were driven from the bottom up, in many cases by Native activists and people sympathetic to their cause. In totalitarian regimes, most 'historical drift' is imposed, top-down, according to the political needs of the regime of the day. The events at Tiananmen Square will not be safe for public consumption until the powers-that-be decide, and no sooner.
Admittedly without reading TFA, that sounds like his point - that what "quants" should be doing is developing good empirically good heuristic models rather than wanking over what are essentially hypothetical analytical ones based on complete SWAG parameters, where the parameters supplied by salesmen will invevitably be optimistic best case ones (and that's putting it charitably).
That's fine, I'm not disputing that. What I'm suggesting, though, is that no amount of empirical testing will save you from someone who just plain lies with their input data - and that part is out of the hands of the people formulating the equations.
I don't for a second want to suggest that there's not room for improvement on the risk-measurement side. What worries me is that improvements on that side might be touted as a 'solution' to the problem, when the real problem is people willing to lie to make money. Hence my stated fear that Wilmott's efforts might be obscuring the fundamental problem.
I'm a long way from New York, so someone correct me if I'm wrong[*], but I've always understood the problem to lie more with the people feeding data into the equations, rather than with the equations themselves.
Now, I accept that risk calculations consisted of a great deal of voodoo because, as Taleb tells us, they tended to ignore 'Black Swan' events (where the 1 in a million catastrophe wasn't going to happen just yet) and saw patterns where only chaos existed, but as I understand it, the core of the problem was simple greed: money-hungry mortgage and securities dealers deliberately feeding bad data into the system.
So-called quants may be decidedly imperfect, but if someone's willing to game the system to make a buck, nothing the quant does can stop it.
If Wilmott doesn't have an answer to that, I fear that his efforts will only obscure the real problem.
Speaking as an Australian, I'd say that it's not because the honourable minister is blunt and straight forward, it's just that he's a bloody idiot.
How true. If being blunt and straightforward disqualified Australians from anything, none of them would have any work.
Oh, and you're all bloody idiots, too, so I'm not sure what my point is, exactly.
Signed,
The blunt, straightforward Canadian idiot in the glass house across the water. 8^)
It's nobody's business but the Turks'.
I dunno about that. if you have a date in Constantinople, you'll be instantaneously, electronically identified in Istanbul.
Not lawsuits - workarounds. For those of us who remember, multi-tasking (after a fashion) was made possible on Windows 3.1 via the TSR - Terminate-and-Stay-Resident programs that left a stub, inert but still in RAM - that allowed a limited task-switching capability.
Those of us who _actually_ remember know you haven't got a clue what you're talking about.
Heh, yeah. My memory isn't what it used to be. I'm not sure I could have got more details wrong without actually trying. Sorry.
It grieves me immensely to say this, but nothing Microsoft does will stop netbooks from shipping with Windows installed. No amount of self-inflicted sabotage can compensate for the irrational loss aversion that characterises most computer users. They just don't feel they can afford to be without Windows.
... And for the next few years, 'Windows' will mean Windows 7.
Not lawsuits - workarounds. For those of us who remember, multi-tasking (after a fashion) was made possible on Windows 3.1 via the TSR - Terminate-and-Stay-Resident programs that left a stub, inert but still in RAM - that allowed a limited task-switching capability.
In Windows 7, I expect we'll see 'broker' services, similar to the ones that some software makers (e.g. Adobe) use to break themselves out of the IE sandbox and to interact with the system. A small broker service that maintains state for a given application will be enough to allow fairly quick task-switching while fooling Windows 7 into believing that there are only 3 apps running at a time.
For my part, I find this scenario repugnant. Whether I like it or not, though, spending time and effort working around designed-in technical limitations that have everything to do with marketing and nothing whatsoever to do with actual technical capability... well, that's been the geek's lot in life ever since login limits on the old proprietary Unix mainframes.
And as much as I decry such phenomena, I still think it's important to recollect that it's circumstances like these that led to the creation of the Free Software Foundation. We will see salutary side-effects in such an environment. If all goes well, it might well fuel an entirely new generation of Stallmans.
We shouldn't need another generation of Stallmans. But if history is any guide, they aren't obsolete yet.
No way it could be a fake. If somebody tried to plant those stickers the urinal cameras would have identified him immedi.... Oh. Hang on....
The U.S. Navy has developed autonomous long range torpedo technology. In a completely unrelated article, Rutgers students announce that they have lost all contact with their AUV and have offered no explanation as to why....
"It was worth the risk," said Rutgers spokesman. "No price is too high if it finally gets us out of New Jersey."
Net neutrality, Linux on desktop, Duke Nukem 4 Ever, cheap macs, freedom from malware, peace in the middle east and a cuddly Tux for all.
I want my fucking pony, you insensitive clod!
Ehe, hehehe, ehe wrong article. :)
Yeah, posting in the wrong article. I hate it when that happens.
If only some browser maker would come up with a new way to deal with these pesky browser UI issues. Tabs are so passé....
I'm actually more disturbed by their selective application of copyright. In all the years since Parliament was first televised, I have never once seen a copyright attribution on the television news reports that make liberal (sorry) use of this very same footage. Other third party footage is always attributed and often licensed.
Full disclosure: I worked for a few years with a company that provided materials for the Parliament of Canada using, among other things, the Parliamentary Hansard, vote results, Committee minutes and reports and much more. We never paid them a penny in royalties for the information and research products that we marketed to the public based on these materials. In fact, they paid us to produce much of it.
If I recall correctly (it's been a decade since I worked there), there was no copyright notice on the materials, though they were clearly labeled as originating from the Parliament of Canada, and bore the Canadian Coat of Arms.
Like Richard Stallman said at the WSIS Tunis panel discussion 2005: This is electronic colonization, i.e. the Africans are supposed to pay for foreign products and remain ignorant and dependent.
He's right, too. I live in a Least Developed Country and write a weekly ICT-related column in one of our national newspapers. When I reported on a closed-door meeting between Microsoft and the Ministry of Education, I made more or less the same observation.
A brief quote:
I didn't think that was particularly incendiary, but the very next working day, I got a call from a very angry Ministry worker, demanding to know who'd spoken to me. Later that week, a half-page rebuttal was published in the same paper, loudly decrying the use of the term 'Colonialism' in relation to software licensing. They claimed that it was inflammatory and prejudiced.
Interestingly, they didn't refute a single argument I used to support my use of the term.
And you're assuming that knowledge and ability are somehow static.
I find this particular line of logic particularly irksome. That's mostly because nearly every single thing I've learned about computers, I've learned under my own steam. There's no mystical Linux Club where knowledge of systems and how they work are magically and instantly conferred on members.
There is, however, a school of thought that encourages lifting oneself up by one's bootstraps, and which (handsomely) rewards curiousity and initiative.
And lest I be accused of arrogance toward those who haven't had the same education and opportunities as I've had, I should mention that I'm putting my money where my mouth is: I work full-time in the developing world, and over the last 5 years or so have watched Linux begin to flourish on desktops and servers in the country where I've taken up residence.
The hardest part of building acceptance for FOSS generally and Linux in particular has been getting people to move away from the perspective that working in IT consists of nothing more than learning a series of incantations to be performed when your Windows machine inevitably goes FUBAR.
It's taken time, and the work isn't nearly done yet, but I'm gratified by the knowledge that, of the young IT apprentices I've taken on over the years, nearly every single one of them holds a responsible professional position managing high-end equipment, a significant part of which is running (or running on) FOSS software. Not one of them had any formal computer training before I happened along. For most of them, their employment opportunities were effectively nil.
Based on my personal and professional experience, therefore, I have to conclude that your argument is specious, misleading and counter-productive.
Only locally. Version 3.11 isn't routable.
So... kind of like a porn shoot, then?
Cool, so this means that my NUKE FROM ORBIT button will finally work?
Seems pretty fishy to me.
I dunno, I think he has every right to be worried about how his cod scales.
NOTE: This post may appear to be a trifle bitter in tone. That's because it is.
Let me speak from my personal experience of living these last 5+ years in a developing country: It's the developed world's own goddamn fault that we don't pay for things online.
The cost of delivering the content is constant for the provider. The cost for the receiver, on the other hand, is insanely high. I'm sharing a 128Kbps ADSL line with 2 others right now, at a total price of about US $55 per month. A 256Kbps line costs US $150. A 512Kbps line is about US $350 (recently reduced from $440). The only reason for this pricing is a monopoly on Internet services jointly controlled by France Telecom and Cable & Wireless.
For reference, the monthly minimum wage (for the minority who actually have work) is about US $250.
But even if we could download things, we couldn't pay for them online, because credit cards are virtually impossible to get from local banks. And by local banks, I mean of course franchises of Australian giants ANZ and Westpac.
We can't get credit cards because we have bad credit ratings. We have bad credit ratings because the average interest rate for a first-time borrower is 23%.
But most of us can't even get a first loan because the one collateral we have, customary land holdings, is not accepted unless it's been leased to someone or commercialised in some way. Most people are not willing to sell their birthright - and their children's only wealth - just for a good credit rating.
But even if we could get a local credit card, the majority of sites online won't accept them because of the risk, coming as it does from a country with (surprise!) poor credit history.
Debit services like Paypal don't even know we exist. Suddenly, the fact that our banks are franchises of regional giants has no bearing on anything.
To sum up: So you don't want to let me access your content? How terribly surprisingly. Fuck you very much and have a nice fucking day.
Shrapnel isn't explodey. Bombs are explodey.
Shrapnel is explodified
You're welcome.
Heh. More seriously, as Joel points out:
Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank and is still incredibly profitable. It has a long way to fall. It could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in remote danger, and you never know... they could reinvent themselves as a shaved-ice company at the last minute.
It's good to see a hint that this fall might finally be starting, but even in this economy, it will be a long time before Microsoft dies.
The detail that I found most interesting is that their revenues dropped by only 6%, but that knocked their earnings down by 32%. This means that, if the company continues to face revenue pressures, they'll continue to spend a lot of cash. Unless they take steps to reduce their costs, they're going to burn up a lot of capital just to continue existing.
The solution is pretty straightforward, of course: Cut costs. But corporations tend to be most vulnerable when their managers start applying their Ivy League MBA wisdom to this excruciatingly difficult problem. Expect turmoil, a good deal of churn, and a lot of their top talent to start looking for greener pastures.
None of this necessarily changes your conclusion that Microsoft is going to be around for a while yet. But what interests me most is what kind of Microsoft will survive.
Well put, but I wish more people understood what 'valuable' really means.
People everywhere get that supply and demand is fundamentally different on the Web, but they get the emphasis entirely wrong. I've written about it in more detail elsewhere, but here's a quick summary:
You can't just arbitrarily limit supply and expect it to magically increase in value. The mechanics of digital media make that impossible. You have to have something that's inherently valuable in the first place.
For most people, the generic fluff that fills up 90% of their local newspaper is not something they would have paid for, if they'd had the choice. On the Web, they have that choice, and they don't pay.
I write for two newspapers, and also publish online. I'm sympathetic to the plight of the traditional dailies and weeklies. I just wish they'd get a clue.
Agreed. My knee-jerk reaction was "how dare they!", but after reading the article it sounds like a more realistic approach than the AP has taken.
I don't think the solution is bad in principle. I'm sure that in practice, however, it would be terrible.
Among the potential problems:
Put simply, I'm worried about mission creep. A good idea becomes an institution, and we see the little guy suffering once again because large organisations prefer to deal with large organisations.
Most - but not all - organisations handling royalty payments are built in such a way that small fry don't get a fair shake. They have a relatively small voice in policy decisions, and inevitably get shouted down by corporate interests.
This group may claim to speak on behalf of bloggers like me whose content gets copied all the time, but I can't see it working out to my benefit. All I can see is yet another group empowering themselves at my expense.
This is what i was thinking when i read this: that you really have to do ultra-low-power, ie fully ARM processors and SSD/flash so you can run on ~5-10 watts
Agreed. Given the output of typical small-scale power generation & storage schemes, 5-10 watts really is about the most you can manage if you want full-time operation.