A deadweight loss is a loss offset by no corresponding gain. Taxes almost always are coupled with them. How so? Because virtually all taxes (income, sales, property in particular) are taxes on productive behavior. To SOME degree, taxing these productive behaviors discourages them....people don't take the job, buy that shirt, or add to their house even though these things are a net positive for them in the absence of taxes. Nobody gains anything when people skip out on mutually beneficial trades or enjoyable private behaviors because taxes make them unprofitable. That good is simply lost - a dead weight. Monopolies also create dead-weight losses, which is why most governments regulate against them. The dead-weight associated with the major taxes is around 15-20%...by which I mean that for every dollar the government brings in, $.15-.20 of productive economic behavior is effectively discouraged, never taxed, and never undertaken, to no ones benefit. A pure loss it is.
Thanks for the insight. I appreciate that you appear to have put some thought into your answers. However, I'm not sure what you're talking about is applicable to the example I gave. We're not considering any price sensitivities in this example, and calculating a deadweight effect requires that you have some insight into the supply and demand curves (see Wikipedia for the graph). For example, in class we discussed this effect when applied to taxes on cigarettes, which will have completely different supply/demand curves and price sensitivities than 911 services.
Additionally, the market already HAS a mechanism to solve the problem you presented anyway. There is a reason there are such choices as first class airplane tickets vs coach, HBO vs basic cable, coupons, senior citizen discounts, etc.
I don't think that price discrimination as you suggest is the answer to the 911 service problem. First, you have to have objective criteria to serve as the basis of price discrimination in order to prevent arbitration. How do you determine the basis for price discrimination for a service? It's not like you can ask the person what their income is and charge them based on that.
You'd be left with providing "tiered services": you pay a little for "economy service" and more for higher levels of service. The problem with that how it would even be possible to provide tiered services? It's not like emergency services are like cable television where you can have premium services (that have a low variable cost, but you can charge a lot for). Would the "economy version" only respond to every other call? Maybe they'd send someone out within 24 hours instead of immediately? No, I can't think of a way to make tiered services work for 911 services. And certainly not in a way that would be more optimal than the regulation example I described.
That said, I think it's clear that the example I gave is not the sole justification for implementing a regulation policy. I'm not arrogant enough to think I can justify a 911 subsidy policy in a Slashdot post; I merely wanted to illustrate to the original poster why a tax would make sense and a knee jerk response that a tax is "blood money" is silly. Clearly additional variables need to be added to the analysis to model this in a more accurate fashion. I'll leave that to the economists.
> It may be common practice in the U.S. but every time it stuns me that whenever people make a mistake the very first thought is how to get > maximum profit out of it and obliterate someone or something.
I recognize your concern about this and share it.
However, in this country we have a large group of individuals with a lot of power and clout. Oftentimes they're not even from the U.S., but rather some offshore country. Some even claim they have more power than a regular U.S. citizen! In any case, English isn't even their natural language. They're called corporations and they only speak money.
They know some English phrases (we're sorry we lost your luggage, we apologize for the 20 minute wait for a customer service representative, etc.), but these are often empty phrases uttered ceaselessly but with little meaning behind them. However, when you speak with your dollars, they certainly listen pretty fast. In fact, usually the only time you know they're sincere is when money comes into the picture. That's when you really know they're sorry, and it really won't happen again.
> The problem is that you're leaving things out of your analysis. What are the chances that the government will actually implement those regulations, as > opposed to ones that fit their ideology better? How do you stop them from adding extra regulations?
The reason I left it out of my analysis is because I have no idea how to model your concerns using a set of linear equations.
If you're concerned, remember two things. First, in a democracy, the government is a reflection of the people's will (at least theoretically). So you (and everyone else) has a say in what it does. Which relates to the second piece: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I'm not sure what you mean. I just re-ran the numbers, and they're correct. It's always possible I made a math error, so it's always good to check. (Spreadsheet available upon request).
> Note that the price could have been set at $200, and only $90 less social profit total would have been made in theory.
If we charge $200, then we only get 10 customers, so the revenue is $2,000, the fixed costs are $1,000, and the variable costs are 10*10=100. So the profit is $900. i don't know what $90 "social profit" means.
We didn't collect tax in this case, so it doesn't make sense to count it.
In the regulated case, we ultimately charge $101 to the rich people ($10 for the service and $91 in tax). We charge $11 to the poor people ($10 for the service, and $1 in tax). In that case, we generate $1,000 in taxes ($910+90), and another $1,000 in service fees ($10*100). So we actually break even and that becomes the optimal solution.
> On the other hand, you had to collect $1000 in tax, which has dead-weight losses much larger than the $90 (15-20% > is a typical "textbook" estimate).
I'm not sure what what you're talking about here. Are you suggesting we must introduce a variable to take into account government inefficiency into this rather simple example? Granted, all sorts of variables can be added to model other things, but that belies the simplicity of the example. We could just as easily introduce variables to model corporate inefficiency (assume the carrier is large enough to be similar to a government organization, such as AT&T), required return on investment and profits for the company, tax benefits for providing the service, effects of competition (although I covered it in the original thread) and other items. However, I think that makes the rather simple example needlessly complicated.
That said, I've never heard of a "textbook estimate" or 15-20% for "dead-weight losses" (whatever that is).
> You already had to bend the numbers well beyond reality to even observe your desired effect.
I admit that this is a simple example. For example, the fixed costs for a 911 service are much, much higher than what I used. This example is intended to be just an illustration of a simple example where regulation makes sense and in fact provides the most efficient (from an economic perspective all users are paying the lowest price) and socially beneficial (all citizens are served by 911 service) solution.
> If you have a factory up-stream of me and you're making the water toxic, I get people from further downstream together and we first ask you to stop. > If you refuse we take it to the media and hurt your profits.
Right. So in your perfect world, we can expect all major polluters to *own* the major media outlets, or will at least have financial arrangements to enable collusion? That way, when you go to one newspaper to claim someone is polluting, the other one can pipe up that nothing of the sort is happening and that the first one is biased.
It's particularly insidious since the press will be completely based on a free market the most believed newspaper will be the one that is most popular-- you know publishes the most gossipy information about celebrities or features the human interest stories that appeal to the widest audience without publishing boring news about the war or whatever.
Be wary of any political system that requires major changes in human nature in order for it to succeed.
> Can you cite your source for this data? Or are you just assuming this because some of your friends are libertarians?
Agreed. And I'm sure if anyone else disagrees with the author's assumption, we'll get to find out the question about how many moderators are libertarians.
I think it's a combination of a number of factors:
1. There is a relatively larger sampling of people willing to talk about being Libertarians, whereas other people aren't necessarily as vocal about their political party membership or whether or not they've adopted a term to conceptualize their political philosophy. Apparent over-representation isn't uncommon where you have a small group of vocal fanatical people.
2. People heavily involved in technology are probably less knowledgeable (nor even interested) in public policy and politics. For those people, Libertarianism provides a certain simplicity without nuance which can be appealing. In this way, Libertarianism is like Communism: fine in theory, but not attractive in practice.
3. People heavily involved in technology are younger with less experience: exactly the type of people who would find appeal in an economic/political movement characterized by simple messages (but with untested policy). In other words, bumper stickers that reinforce ideology are more interesting than policy analysis.
As for point #3, here's an old example. A couple of years ago on Slashdot, there was a discussion about 911 services. A presumed libertarian said that we ought to privatize 911 services and not provide it to everyone who can't pay (and let charity help the rest). I was getting my MBA at the time, and we had just covered heavy fixed cost models that illustrate textbook-perfect examples of situations where regulation is more economic beneficial to all parties than a voluntary purchase model. So I wrote a response. The result was very similar to the other times I've had a discussion with a Libertarian.
In that thread, I used a simplified example with hard numbers to show economically that the regulation case actually benefitted everyone (even if you excluded any altruism). What was interesting is that over the course of the thread, the Libertarians who responded did not do any quantitative analysis at all; they responded with simplistic slogans instead. They threw out a couple of half-baked ideas: tiered services model or vouchers for poor people (both easy to say, but with no hard details). For good measure, They sprinkled a few slogans: "There's absolutely no reason that the government needs to supply a monopoly service" and "An argument based on cost is 'bee reasoning'" and similar sentiments.
> The Danish cartoons was deliberate trolling based on the religious taboo of depicting Mohammad. It succeeded beyond expectation.
A little more than that. As you wrote, Muslims prohibit any depiction of Mohammad. Muslims were very sensitive to monotheism, and they were offending by the iconography of polytheistic religions. I guess there's always a fear that people will stop worshiping God and start worshiping the image or statue. I've heard it said that they believe that Mohammad was too beautiful to be properly depicted in art or illustration, but I think that argument may be a simplification of the previous concept of avoiding iconography. I'm sure we've run across people closer to happily stick a Christian cross on their $50,000 SUV, while presumably forgetting Jesus's messages. Or for an older example, people in Biblical times making gold idols to worship. The Muslims are presumably avoiding that with their taboo. The Muslims are offended not necessarily in Mohammad being shown in an unflattering light, but in his depiction at all.
I believe this is similar to how some orthodox Jews won't even say "God", because they believe it's arrogant to name Him. The idea is that when you name something, you are in a sense limiting it. For example, if someone argues "I don't think we should we should extend health care benefits to poor children", an opponent could respond, "Oh, you're just being a Conservative" without actually addressing the logic of their argument. In that sense, they're dismissing them by "naming" them. The orthodox Jews are seeing this the same way: by naming God, you're limiting Him, which shows arrogance.
> This strip is not really about Islam, but about two individuals one of whom is "religion shopping". The description of Islam in the cartoon is vague enough not to offend > any Muslims.
I saw the strip as being more than just about religion shopping. It was saying that some beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims are well aligned with Steve's politically conservative philosophy. Fundamentalist Muslims and Fundamentalist Christians (who provide the justification for political conservatives today) believe women should be second class citizens.
I can imagine there's huge overlap (okay fine, relatively large overlap) between Slashdot readers and fans of TMBG, with their clever lyrics and unusual song topics, such as Mesopotamians, past presidents, or even Linux users.
So when is Slashdot going to pay They Might Be Giants to do a theme song? Fatboy Slim already did one, but there probably aren't as many fans on this board.
Continuing the them of TMBG using technology, I heard that their song Spider was originally created on a Macintosh just moments after they unboxed it. This was back when Apple first introduced 16-bit stereo (as opposed to 8-bit mono) recording capabilities in the early 1990s. I had heard TMBG used the box of said computer to also do some of the percussion for the song.
> To me, it is empowering and makes me feel BETTER about being on top of things.
That's a good point, but I think the concern can be that being cc'ed on too many things can be overwhelming.
At my company (foreign owned by a country known for being hierarchical and process oriented), people are used to cc'ing their managers on even routine emails. In the U.S., this would be viewed as micromanagement and the opposite of delegating, but for them, it's a way for their managers to be confident that things are progressing smoothly. We have people from different cultures on our team, so we get a lot of clashing from that perspective.
> If you keep your inbox largely clear, then this shouldn't happen.
It's funny to see how people manage their in-boxes. I do many of the suggestions you listed, and I have my email client only check my email once every 15 minutes (and even then, I have a set of carefully designed rules to filter out stuff I don't need to respond to in that time period). I don't have my Blackberry buzz me about new emails, so I only look at it when I've got time. I've found that this has helped me manage my work load quite a bit (thus, freeing up time talking about it on Slashdot).
However, my boss's in-box is hilarious. He easily has thousands of unread messages, and he's always complaining that the IT department doesn't give us a large enough in-box capacity. He is also like one of those people that has dozens (hundreds?) of files on his Windows desktop, rather than filing them away. I think this is due to many people having an out of sight, out of mind issue. If they don't have their emails or files staring at them all the time, they'll forget they're there, and they won't know how to quickly find them again.
Some skepticism is needed here. This reminds me of Hume's Maxim
> The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our > attention) that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless > the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more > miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish
In other words, some random blogger claiming that climatologists have been using screwed up figures about global warming due to a "year 2000" bug is pretty miraculous. I find it more believable that there's more to the story here than what's being posted. I read some of the logic chopping in the blog post's comments, but I didn't see any climatologists speaking there. Just some random people who seemed like they were playing detective.
I'd like to see some additional corroboration on this. The Bush Administration has had no problems in skewing information to match their political agenda, and clearly discounting the science around climate change is part of that agenda. One article sitting on some blogger's site isn't enough to convince me. Moreover, I immediately discount any statement that contains:
> I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the > mainstream media.
What is that supposed to mean? It sounds like an appeal to a conspiracy theory. The fact is the mainstream media has been biased towards the Bush administration and Republicans in general for at least the past 10 years. For example, the New York Times trumpeted the Bush administration claims about Iraq nonstop until we went to war. All the major newspapers reported every unsubstantiated accusation against Clinton when he was in office, but they quickly lose interest in all the far more serious Bush scandals. And closer to this subject, this same press will give as much time to people who promote Biblical Creationism and "Intelligent Design" as they will to real biologists who are doing science.
So if this isn't reported in the mainstream press, or better yet in a science journal, it's because whatever the blogger is stating isn't what it sounds like.
> It's a vicious circle and it is caused essentially by one feature: shuffle mode.
Your explanation is great. iTunes has a "Sound Check" function where songs' sound levels are adjusted to make them about the same level. Doesn't that solve the problem? Maybe as more people use jukebox software (with a similar feature as Sound Check) to manage their music, there will be no reason for a loudness arms race since the volume will get turned down by the music anyway.
> I for one think this is a great idea. Nothing will speed up software patent reform faster than when companies are unable to fix bugs in their products > without paying.
I don't think so. Companies will just change their EULA to say that if any bugs or security vulnerabilities are found, they should be reported to the originating company and not sold for profit. Then the Company can just say that any deal with Intellectual Weapons is a violation of the EULA.
> the physics doesn't back it up. It is false for the same reason that I can criss-cross my flash light signal thru a 500 terawatt laser beam > without interference.
The physics does back it it. Your example works because they're at different frequencies -- it's called frequency division multiplexing. If they're on the same channel, you would get co-channel interference.
> The whole premise behind the FCC was that if spectrum was unregulated you would have a tragedy of the commons were everybody would > pollute it so much that it would become unusable. However in practice that has turned out to be a complete and absolute lie.
Ladies and gentlemen, the above is Exhibit A to prove there are not enough RF engineers on Slashdot.
> Spectrum Anarchy - kill the FCC (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is Exhibit B.
It is completely ridiculous to suggest that we can let the "market" sort out frequency allocation usage. The huge amounts of interference is the reason the FCC was created to begin with. We tried this once before, and it didn't work-- this guy did a better job of explaining it two years ago. The fact that we have widespread wireless access is because we have rational use of spectrum. To use an example that can appeal to a Randroid from a strictly economic basis, no one has been able to create a nationwide, mobile network in licensed exempt spectrum, despite the fact that they have a huge economic incentive to do so. New licensed spectrum costs billions of dollars in license fees for the service provider, before even a single dollar is spent on capital infrastructure. Anyone who could build a competing network in the license exempt spectrum to Verizon Wireless or AT&T Mobile without that kind outlay would have a huge cost advantage. So why hasn't it happened? Easy, license exempt works fine for relatively short distances with low output power, but when you have to deploy a wide network, there's no substitute for licensed spectrum. Many cities are starting to figure this out, too. They started with a dream of free WiFi for their city, only to discover that interference made throughput low and the network unreliable.
I agree that the new 700 MHz spectrum should be available (and encouraged) for new market entrants. The recent AWS auction (1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz paired spectrum) went to many existing companies, with the major exception being the consortium of cable companies who won a significant amount of spectrum under the Spectrumco name. If a player like Google won spectrum, we could have an interesting new take on wireless services.
I'm watching the highlights on the Wall Street Journal, and it's interesting how different these two guys are. Gates is a dumpy, middle-aged guy who is slouching in his chair. He starts telling the story about how Apple paid Microsoft for a floating point version of BASIC. Jobs, who sits up straight and appears to be in fairly good shape (particularly since his cancer surgery) has to interrupt him, saying "let me tell the story." Gates is polite and lets Jobs interrupt him. However, suddenly the boring anecdote becomes interesting, since Jobs is just a better storyteller.
In a related note, at time index 12:04, Jobs starts talking about the memory capabilities of computers back then, and how different they are today. Same theme as the Mac Plus v AMD Dual Core article today!
On the whole, it's fascinating to see these two giants in the same interview.
> although the first anti industry sentiments came out there (StarF*ckers comes to mind). > I saw that same bent in "The Hand That Feeds", although maybe I need to go back and listen to it with a different mindset.
Give it another listen, and see if you notice the subtle criticism. He's basically speaking to the people who were tacitly for the Iraq war (or at least weren't strong enough to say no). Perhaps he's even talking to the reporters who were so gung-ho about the war? To top it off, Reznor wanted to perform the song on the 2005 MTV video music awards with a picture of George W. Bush behind him. MTV wouldn't let him -- it was just the picture, no doctoring-- so he dropped out:
"Nine Inch Nails will not be performing at the MTV Movie Awards as previously announced. We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop," Reznor wrote. "Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me. See you on tour this fall when we return to play in America."
Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!
> Personally, I liked "Getting Smaller" best, although I thought the album as a whole . I'm looking forward to getting the new one.
Getting Smaller is a great track, too. The new one is just as good as With Teeth, although it took me a few listens to get into it.
I think his stuff has progressed a little bit. It's a little more organic sounding, particularly compared to Pretty Hate Machine. For example, one of the songs on his new album has a trumpet!
More importantly, I think his lyrics have gotten more mature. A lot of Pretty Hate Machine all the way to his previous two albums were about angst and navel gazing: "Woe is me, someone I love dumped me!". Maybe throw in a bit of "wow, the music industry is full of phonies! I blame you, God!". Maybe it's completely appropriate when you're a teenager or in college, but as you get older, it's a bit tiring.
"With Teeth" represented a shift in his lyrics in that they're more mature and he seems to be finally using his bully pulpit to say something important. "The Hand That Feeds" is a brilliant questioning of the war in Iraq ("what if this whole crusade is a charade?"). "Every Day is Exactly The Same" perfectly describes my job (particularly after a bitterly depressing day) after working for more than a decade ("I believe I can see the future, 'cause I repeat the same routine.")
Year Zero improves on that even more. He's gone from complaining about his love life to providing an interesting commentary and warning against the move to fascism. My favorite track "Capital G" is a perfect description a young Republican or someone who is on his way to becoming a "Brown Shirt".
So while the music isn't wildly different, I think that his lyrics have matured quite a bit. In that way, he's gone from entertainment to art, and it makes his music far more interesting.
> If you think about it, Anakin/Vader lost just about every fair fight he was in.
You're close, but I think he squeaks ahead
FIGHT!
Episode I 1. Anakin vs Droid ship: Anakin
Episode II 2. Anakin vs Padme in front of Queen: Padme 3. Anakin vs mercenary: Mercenary knocks him off, so he loses 4. Anakin vs Padme in attempt to get to first base: Anakin! -. Anakin vs Padme on Tatooine in the cockpit of her spacecraft: Anakin concedes ("I've given up arguing with you"), so Padme wins by default. However, match is a draw because Anakin clearly used the Force to turn on Padme's "headlights" 5. Anakin vs that creature in the ring: Anakin 6. Anakin vs Count Dooku: Dooku
Episode III 7. Anakin vs buzz droids: Anakin 8. Anakin vs Dooku (rematch): Anakin 9. Anakin vs Mace: Anakin -. Anakin/Vader vs random padawans: Anakin (doesn't count as it wasn't fair) 10. Anakin/Vader vs Obi-Wan: Obiwan
Anakin score so far: 6/10
Episode IV 1. Vader vs. Obi-Wan: Vader 2, 3, 4. Vader vs X-Wing pilot: +1+1+1 (at least) 5. Vader vs Han Solo: Solo
Episode V 6. Vader vs Han Solo: Vader (blocks blaster bolts with glove for the score!) 7. Vader vs Lando (debate): Vader 8. Vader vs Luke: Vader
Episode VI 9. Vader vs Luke: Luke 10. Vader/Anakin vs Emperor: Vader
Normally, you'd be right. A projector can get you a much bigger screen at a much lower price than a TV. The problem is your room has to be able to support it. There are some cases where you want to do a projector, but you have to resort to a TV because of problems in the room.
When we built our house, the media room was supposed to accommodate a projector, but it didn't. The problem was the ceiling is 9 feet tall, but the wall where you'd project has a slope at the top of the ceiling for the sloping roof. So we only had about 5 feet of wall space. To make things worse, although you could shoot the screen below the sloped roof, the keystone feature couldn't mitigate it completely, so the projector would have had to hang about 4 feet from the ceiling. With it that low, people could bump into it, it was too close to people's heads (giving off heat and noise), and it would have looked silly. The alternative was to have a screen hanging from the ceiling about two feet from the back wall. The problem with that solution is that the projector was too close to the screen, and the projector had to be at least a certain distance from the screen to stay in focus.
We ended up doing a 57" rear projection DLP TV instead. So people with uncooperative rooms welcome the larger screen size, as I would expect the smaller screen sizes will go down in price.
> This is not an apple TV problem per se, it's an ITMS problem. I don't have an ATV but I do buy videos
I agree. I do have an Apple TV, and I buy videos (limited to "The Office"), and yes, the video quality of ITMS is less than DVD. However, I've found that that the Apple TV displays ITMS content better than my video iPod connected to the same TV.
Photos in the screen saver or browsing look incredible, so it's definitely an ITMS video quality issue, not an Apple TV issue.
Like, say you are traveling at 1 mph less than the speed of light in relation to me, and you throw a ball at 80 mph (in relation to you) forward. How fast would the ball appear to be going relative to me? Well, using Einstein's Theory of Relativity we would find that the ball would be traveling at a speed of 670,616,628.384 mph, or 0.99999999850884 the speed of light.
I think there needs to be more emphasis on the "relativity" part, which requires an observer.
From your example, there are three people that we need to be concerned about: 1. Thrower (traveling at c-1 mph or 185,999 miles/sec or.999994c) 2. Catcher (traveling at c-1 mph or 185,999 miles/sec) 3. the observer (frame of reference, so traveling at 0 miles per sec in relation to the others)
To the thrower, the ball is traveling at 0.022 miles per second (80 miles per hour). Wait, that's too slow. I'll change your example.
Let's say you fired a gun where the bullet fires at 0.1c (you used LOTS of gunpowder here). To People 1 and 2, the bullet would fire at 0.1c. The problem is person 3 (the observer).
Newtonian physics would suggest that the total speed from the observer's standpoint is.999994 +.1 = 1.099994c, which is wrong. Using this guy's formula, it stays below 1.0c: 0.999956c.
Part of Relativity is the fact that there is no absolute frame of reference. I'm not sure if the handwaving on a bus example (further up this thread) works, because it doesn't take advantage of what the observer would see.
Agreed. I like a lot of music from that era, but The Beatles never clicked for me. I have about a dozen of their songs, but the only full CD I bought was Sgt. Peppers. It has a many good songs, but it's got some duds in my opinion (Lovely Rita, Fixing a Hole, Getting Better, specifically).
On the other hand, I really like the song "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," so being able to buy a few Beatles songs makes sense.
It looks like he did a lot of work, and it looks authentic.
However, there's one photo missing: one of these days, he'll have to sell that house. I want a picture of the real estate agent's face when they see that room!
"Captain, property values have slowed to impulse power."
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the insight. I appreciate that you appear to have put some thought into your answers. However, I'm not sure what you're talking about is applicable to the example I gave. We're not considering any price sensitivities in this example, and calculating a deadweight effect requires that you have some insight into the supply and demand curves (see Wikipedia for the graph). For example, in class we discussed this effect when applied to taxes on cigarettes, which will have completely different supply/demand curves and price sensitivities than 911 services.
I don't think that price discrimination as you suggest is the answer to the 911 service problem. First, you have to have objective criteria to serve as the basis of price discrimination in order to prevent arbitration. How do you determine the basis for price discrimination for a service? It's not like you can ask the person what their income is and charge them based on that.
You'd be left with providing "tiered services": you pay a little for "economy service" and more for higher levels of service. The problem with that how it would even be possible to provide tiered services? It's not like emergency services are like cable television where you can have premium services (that have a low variable cost, but you can charge a lot for). Would the "economy version" only respond to every other call? Maybe they'd send someone out within 24 hours instead of immediately? No, I can't think of a way to make tiered services work for 911 services. And certainly not in a way that would be more optimal than the regulation example I described.
That said, I think it's clear that the example I gave is not the sole justification for implementing a regulation policy. I'm not arrogant enough to think I can justify a 911 subsidy policy in a Slashdot post; I merely wanted to illustrate to the original poster why a tax would make sense and a knee jerk response that a tax is "blood money" is silly. Clearly additional variables need to be added to the analysis to model this in a more accurate fashion. I'll leave that to the economists.
> It may be common practice in the U.S. but every time it stuns me that whenever people make a mistake the very first thought is how to get
> maximum profit out of it and obliterate someone or something.
I recognize your concern about this and share it.
However, in this country we have a large group of individuals with a lot of power and clout. Oftentimes they're not even from the U.S., but rather some offshore country. Some even claim they have more power than a regular U.S. citizen! In any case, English isn't even their natural language. They're called corporations and they only speak money.
They know some English phrases (we're sorry we lost your luggage, we apologize for the 20 minute wait for a customer service representative, etc.), but these are often empty phrases uttered ceaselessly but with little meaning behind them. However, when you speak with your dollars, they certainly listen pretty fast. In fact, usually the only time you know they're sincere is when money comes into the picture. That's when you really know they're sorry, and it really won't happen again.
> In retrospect, perhaps I went a bit too far. Your post was repellent, but not so much that it warranted that degree of firmness. My apologies.
;-)
No problem. It could have been worse. You could have killed my parents, ground them up, and fed them to me in a bowl of chili.
> The problem is that you're leaving things out of your analysis. What are the chances that the government will actually implement those regulations, as > opposed to ones that fit their ideology better? How do you stop them from adding extra regulations?
The reason I left it out of my analysis is because I have no idea how to model your concerns using a set of linear equations.
If you're concerned, remember two things. First, in a democracy, the government is a reflection of the people's will (at least theoretically). So you (and everyone else) has a say in what it does. Which relates to the second piece: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
I'm not sure what you mean. I just re-ran the numbers, and they're correct. It's always possible I made a math error, so it's always good to check. (Spreadsheet available upon request).
> Note that the price could have been set at $200, and only $90 less social profit total would have been made in theory.
If we charge $200, then we only get 10 customers, so the revenue is $2,000, the fixed costs are $1,000, and the variable costs are 10*10=100. So the profit is $900. i don't know what $90 "social profit" means.
We didn't collect tax in this case, so it doesn't make sense to count it.
In the regulated case, we ultimately charge $101 to the rich people ($10 for the service and $91 in tax). We charge $11 to the poor people ($10 for the service, and $1 in tax). In that case, we generate $1,000 in taxes ($910+90), and another $1,000 in service fees ($10*100). So we actually break even and that becomes the optimal solution.
> On the other hand, you had to collect $1000 in tax, which has dead-weight losses much larger than the $90 (15-20%
> is a typical "textbook" estimate).
I'm not sure what what you're talking about here. Are you suggesting we must introduce a variable to take into account government inefficiency into this rather simple example? Granted, all sorts of variables can be added to model other things, but that belies the simplicity of the example. We could just as easily introduce variables to model corporate inefficiency (assume the carrier is large enough to be similar to a government organization, such as AT&T), required return on investment and profits for the company, tax benefits for providing the service, effects of competition (although I covered it in the original thread) and other items. However, I think that makes the rather simple example needlessly complicated.
That said, I've never heard of a "textbook estimate" or 15-20% for "dead-weight losses" (whatever that is).
> You already had to bend the numbers well beyond reality to even observe your desired effect.
I admit that this is a simple example. For example, the fixed costs for a 911 service are much, much higher than what I used. This example is intended to be just an illustration of a simple example where regulation makes sense and in fact provides the most efficient (from an economic perspective all users are paying the lowest price) and socially beneficial (all citizens are served by 911 service) solution.
> If you have a factory up-stream of me and you're making the water toxic, I get people from further downstream together and we first ask you to stop.
> If you refuse we take it to the media and hurt your profits.
Right. So in your perfect world, we can expect all major polluters to *own* the major media outlets, or will at least have financial arrangements to enable collusion? That way, when you go to one newspaper to claim someone is polluting, the other one can pipe up that nothing of the sort is happening and that the first one is biased.
It's particularly insidious since the press will be completely based on a free market the most believed newspaper will be the one that is most popular-- you know publishes the most gossipy information about celebrities or features the human interest stories that appeal to the widest audience without publishing boring news about the war or whatever.
Be wary of any political system that requires major changes in human nature in order for it to succeed.
> Can you cite your source for this data? Or are you just assuming this because some of your friends are libertarians?
Agreed. And I'm sure if anyone else disagrees with the author's assumption, we'll get to find out the question about how many moderators are libertarians.
I think it's a combination of a number of factors:
1. There is a relatively larger sampling of people willing to talk about being Libertarians, whereas other people aren't necessarily as vocal about their political party membership or whether or not they've adopted a term to conceptualize their political philosophy. Apparent over-representation isn't uncommon where you have a small group of vocal fanatical people.
2. People heavily involved in technology are probably less knowledgeable (nor even interested) in public policy and politics. For those people, Libertarianism provides a certain simplicity without nuance which can be appealing. In this way, Libertarianism is like Communism: fine in theory, but not attractive in practice.
3. People heavily involved in technology are younger with less experience: exactly the type of people who would find appeal in an economic/political movement characterized by simple messages (but with untested policy). In other words, bumper stickers that reinforce ideology are more interesting than policy analysis.
As for point #3, here's an old example. A couple of years ago on Slashdot, there was a discussion about 911 services. A presumed libertarian said that we ought to privatize 911 services and not provide it to everyone who can't pay (and let charity help the rest). I was getting my MBA at the time, and we had just covered heavy fixed cost models that illustrate textbook-perfect examples of situations where regulation is more economic beneficial to all parties than a voluntary purchase model. So I wrote a response. The result was very similar to the other times I've had a discussion with a Libertarian.
In that thread, I used a simplified example with hard numbers to show economically that the regulation case actually benefitted everyone (even if you excluded any altruism). What was interesting is that over the course of the thread, the Libertarians who responded did not do any quantitative analysis at all; they responded with simplistic slogans instead. They threw out a couple of half-baked ideas: tiered services model or vouchers for poor people (both easy to say, but with no hard details). For good measure, They sprinkled a few slogans: "There's absolutely no reason that the government needs to supply a monopoly service" and "An argument based on cost is 'bee reasoning'" and similar sentiments.
> The Danish cartoons was deliberate trolling based on the religious taboo of depicting Mohammad. It succeeded beyond expectation.
A little more than that. As you wrote, Muslims prohibit any depiction of Mohammad. Muslims were very sensitive to monotheism, and they were offending by the iconography of polytheistic religions. I guess there's always a fear that people will stop worshiping God and start worshiping the image or statue. I've heard it said that they believe that Mohammad was too beautiful to be properly depicted in art or illustration, but I think that argument may be a simplification of the previous concept of avoiding iconography. I'm sure we've run across people closer to happily stick a Christian cross on their $50,000 SUV, while presumably forgetting Jesus's messages. Or for an older example, people in Biblical times making gold idols to worship. The Muslims are presumably avoiding that with their taboo. The Muslims are offended not necessarily in Mohammad being shown in an unflattering light, but in his depiction at all.
I believe this is similar to how some orthodox Jews won't even say "God", because they believe it's arrogant to name Him. The idea is that when you name something, you are in a sense limiting it. For example, if someone argues "I don't think we should we should extend health care benefits to poor children", an opponent could respond, "Oh, you're just being a Conservative" without actually addressing the logic of their argument. In that sense, they're dismissing them by "naming" them. The orthodox Jews are seeing this the same way: by naming God, you're limiting Him, which shows arrogance.
> This strip is not really about Islam, but about two individuals one of whom is "religion shopping". The description of Islam in the cartoon is vague enough not to offend
> any Muslims.
I saw the strip as being more than just about religion shopping. It was saying that some beliefs of fundamentalist Muslims are well aligned with Steve's politically conservative philosophy. Fundamentalist Muslims and Fundamentalist Christians (who provide the justification for political conservatives today) believe women should be second class citizens.
I can imagine there's huge overlap (okay fine, relatively large overlap) between Slashdot readers and fans of TMBG, with their clever lyrics and unusual song topics, such as Mesopotamians, past presidents, or even Linux users.
So when is Slashdot going to pay They Might Be Giants to do a theme song? Fatboy Slim already did one, but there probably aren't as many fans on this board.
Continuing the them of TMBG using technology, I heard that their song Spider was originally created on a Macintosh just moments after they unboxed it. This was back when Apple first introduced 16-bit stereo (as opposed to 8-bit mono) recording capabilities in the early 1990s. I had heard TMBG used the box of said computer to also do some of the percussion for the song.
> To me, it is empowering and makes me feel BETTER about being on top of things.
That's a good point, but I think the concern can be that being cc'ed on too many things can be overwhelming.
At my company (foreign owned by a country known for being hierarchical and process oriented), people are used to cc'ing their managers on even routine emails. In the U.S., this would be viewed as micromanagement and the opposite of delegating, but for them, it's a way for their managers to be confident that things are progressing smoothly. We have people from different cultures on our team, so we get a lot of clashing from that perspective.
> If you keep your inbox largely clear, then this shouldn't happen.
It's funny to see how people manage their in-boxes. I do many of the suggestions you listed, and I have my email client only check my email once every 15 minutes (and even then, I have a set of carefully designed rules to filter out stuff I don't need to respond to in that time period). I don't have my Blackberry buzz me about new emails, so I only look at it when I've got time. I've found that this has helped me manage my work load quite a bit (thus, freeing up time talking about it on Slashdot).
However, my boss's in-box is hilarious. He easily has thousands of unread messages, and he's always complaining that the IT department doesn't give us a large enough in-box capacity. He is also like one of those people that has dozens (hundreds?) of files on his Windows desktop, rather than filing them away. I think this is due to many people having an out of sight, out of mind issue. If they don't have their emails or files staring at them all the time, they'll forget they're there, and they won't know how to quickly find them again.
Some skepticism is needed here. This reminds me of Hume's Maxim
> The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our
> attention) that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless
> the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more
> miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish
In other words, some random blogger claiming that climatologists have been using screwed up figures about global warming due to a "year 2000" bug is pretty miraculous. I find it more believable that there's more to the story here than what's being posted. I read some of the logic chopping in the blog post's comments, but I didn't see any climatologists speaking there. Just some random people who seemed like they were playing detective.
I'd like to see some additional corroboration on this. The Bush Administration has had no problems in skewing information to match their political agenda, and clearly discounting the science around climate change is part of that agenda. One article sitting on some blogger's site isn't enough to convince me. Moreover, I immediately discount any statement that contains:
> I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the
> mainstream media.
What is that supposed to mean? It sounds like an appeal to a conspiracy theory. The fact is the mainstream media has been biased towards the Bush administration and Republicans in general for at least the past 10 years. For example, the New York Times trumpeted the Bush administration claims about Iraq nonstop until we went to war. All the major newspapers reported every unsubstantiated accusation against Clinton when he was in office, but they quickly lose interest in all the far more serious Bush scandals. And closer to this subject, this same press will give as much time to people who promote Biblical Creationism and "Intelligent Design" as they will to real biologists who are doing science.
So if this isn't reported in the mainstream press, or better yet in a science journal, it's because whatever the blogger is stating isn't what it sounds like.
> It's a vicious circle and it is caused essentially by one feature: shuffle mode.
Your explanation is great. iTunes has a "Sound Check" function where songs' sound levels are adjusted to make them about the same level. Doesn't that solve the problem? Maybe as more people use jukebox software (with a similar feature as Sound Check) to manage their music, there will be no reason for a loudness arms race since the volume will get turned down by the music anyway.
> I for one think this is a great idea. Nothing will speed up software patent reform faster than when companies are unable to fix bugs in their products
> without paying.
I don't think so. Companies will just change their EULA to say that if any bugs or security vulnerabilities are found, they should be reported to the originating company and not sold for profit. Then the Company can just say that any deal with Intellectual Weapons is a violation of the EULA.
> the physics doesn't back it up. It is false for the same reason that I can criss-cross my flash light signal thru a 500 terawatt laser beam
> without interference.
The physics does back it it. Your example works because they're at different frequencies -- it's called frequency division multiplexing. If they're on the same channel, you would get co-channel interference.
> The whole premise behind the FCC was that if spectrum was unregulated you would have a tragedy of the commons were everybody would
> pollute it so much that it would become unusable. However in practice that has turned out to be a complete and absolute lie.
Ladies and gentlemen, the above is Exhibit A to prove there are not enough RF engineers on Slashdot.
> Spectrum Anarchy - kill the FCC (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is Exhibit B.
It is completely ridiculous to suggest that we can let the "market" sort out frequency allocation usage. The huge amounts of interference is the reason the FCC was created to begin with. We tried this once before, and it didn't work-- this guy did a better job of explaining it two years ago. The fact that we have widespread wireless access is because we have rational use of spectrum. To use an example that can appeal to a Randroid from a strictly economic basis, no one has been able to create a nationwide, mobile network in licensed exempt spectrum, despite the fact that they have a huge economic incentive to do so. New licensed spectrum costs billions of dollars in license fees for the service provider, before even a single dollar is spent on capital infrastructure. Anyone who could build a competing network in the license exempt spectrum to Verizon Wireless or AT&T Mobile without that kind outlay would have a huge cost advantage. So why hasn't it happened? Easy, license exempt works fine for relatively short distances with low output power, but when you have to deploy a wide network, there's no substitute for licensed spectrum. Many cities are starting to figure this out, too. They started with a dream of free WiFi for their city, only to discover that interference made throughput low and the network unreliable.
I agree that the new 700 MHz spectrum should be available (and encouraged) for new market entrants. The recent AWS auction (1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz paired spectrum) went to many existing companies, with the major exception being the consortium of cable companies who won a significant amount of spectrum under the Spectrumco name. If a player like Google won spectrum, we could have an interesting new take on wireless services.
I'm watching the highlights on the Wall Street Journal, and it's interesting how different these two guys are. Gates is a dumpy, middle-aged guy who is slouching in his chair. He starts telling the story about how Apple paid Microsoft for a floating point version of BASIC. Jobs, who sits up straight and appears to be in fairly good shape (particularly since his cancer surgery) has to interrupt him, saying "let me tell the story." Gates is polite and lets Jobs interrupt him. However, suddenly the boring anecdote becomes interesting, since Jobs is just a better storyteller.
In a related note, at time index 12:04, Jobs starts talking about the memory capabilities of computers back then, and how different they are today. Same theme as the Mac Plus v AMD Dual Core article today!
On the whole, it's fascinating to see these two giants in the same interview.
> I saw that same bent in "The Hand That Feeds", although maybe I need to go back and listen to it with a different mindset.
Give it another listen, and see if you notice the subtle criticism. He's basically speaking to the people who were tacitly for the Iraq war (or at least weren't strong enough to say no). Perhaps he's even talking to the reporters who were so gung-ho about the war? To top it off, Reznor wanted to perform the song on the 2005 MTV video music awards with a picture of George W. Bush behind him. MTV wouldn't let him -- it was just the picture, no doctoring-- so he dropped out:
Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!
> Personally, I liked "Getting Smaller" best, although I thought the album as a whole . I'm looking forward to getting the new one.
Getting Smaller is a great track, too. The new one is just as good as With Teeth, although it took me a few listens to get into it.
> his stuff doesn't seem to have progressed much.
I think his stuff has progressed a little bit. It's a little more organic sounding, particularly compared to Pretty Hate Machine. For example, one of the songs on his new album has a trumpet!
More importantly, I think his lyrics have gotten more mature. A lot of Pretty Hate Machine all the way to his previous two albums were about angst and navel gazing: "Woe is me, someone I love dumped me!". Maybe throw in a bit of "wow, the music industry is full of phonies! I blame you, God!". Maybe it's completely appropriate when you're a teenager or in college, but as you get older, it's a bit tiring.
"With Teeth" represented a shift in his lyrics in that they're more mature and he seems to be finally using his bully pulpit to say something important. "The Hand That Feeds" is a brilliant questioning of the war in Iraq ("what if this whole crusade is a charade?"). "Every Day is Exactly The Same" perfectly describes my job (particularly after a bitterly depressing day) after working for more than a decade ("I believe I can see the future, 'cause I repeat the same routine.")
Year Zero improves on that even more. He's gone from complaining about his love life to providing an interesting commentary and warning against the move to fascism. My favorite track "Capital G" is a perfect description a young Republican or someone who is on his way to becoming a "Brown Shirt".
So while the music isn't wildly different, I think that his lyrics have matured quite a bit. In that way, he's gone from entertainment to art, and it makes his music far more interesting.
> If you think about it, Anakin/Vader lost just about every fair fight he was in.
You're close, but I think he squeaks ahead
FIGHT!
Episode I
1. Anakin vs Droid ship: Anakin
Episode II
2. Anakin vs Padme in front of Queen: Padme
3. Anakin vs mercenary: Mercenary knocks him off, so he loses
4. Anakin vs Padme in attempt to get to first base: Anakin!
-. Anakin vs Padme on Tatooine in the cockpit of her spacecraft: Anakin concedes ("I've given up arguing with you"), so Padme wins by default. However, match is a draw because Anakin clearly used the Force to turn on Padme's "headlights"
5. Anakin vs that creature in the ring: Anakin
6. Anakin vs Count Dooku: Dooku
Episode III
7. Anakin vs buzz droids: Anakin
8. Anakin vs Dooku (rematch): Anakin
9. Anakin vs Mace: Anakin
-. Anakin/Vader vs random padawans: Anakin (doesn't count as it wasn't fair)
10. Anakin/Vader vs Obi-Wan: Obiwan
Anakin score so far: 6/10
Episode IV
1. Vader vs. Obi-Wan: Vader
2, 3, 4. Vader vs X-Wing pilot: +1+1+1 (at least)
5. Vader vs Han Solo: Solo
Episode V
6. Vader vs Han Solo: Vader (blocks blaster bolts with glove for the score!)
7. Vader vs Lando (debate): Vader
8. Vader vs Luke: Vader
Episode VI
9. Vader vs Luke: Luke
10. Vader/Anakin vs Emperor: Vader
Vader score: 8/10
Anakin/Vader score (lifetime): 14/20
So he didn't do too bad.
(I can't believe I wasted time doing this)
> You could buy a Texas instruments DLP projector
Normally, you'd be right. A projector can get you a much bigger screen at a much lower price than a TV. The problem is your room has to be able to support it. There are some cases where you want to do a projector, but you have to resort to a TV because of problems in the room.
When we built our house, the media room was supposed to accommodate a projector, but it didn't. The problem was the ceiling is 9 feet tall, but the wall where you'd project has a slope at the top of the ceiling for the sloping roof. So we only had about 5 feet of wall space. To make things worse, although you could shoot the screen below the sloped roof, the keystone feature couldn't mitigate it completely, so the projector would have had to hang about 4 feet from the ceiling. With it that low, people could bump into it, it was too close to people's heads (giving off heat and noise), and it would have looked silly. The alternative was to have a screen hanging from the ceiling about two feet from the back wall. The problem with that solution is that the projector was too close to the screen, and the projector had to be at least a certain distance from the screen to stay in focus.
We ended up doing a 57" rear projection DLP TV instead. So people with uncooperative rooms welcome the larger screen size, as I would expect the smaller screen sizes will go down in price.
> This is not an apple TV problem per se, it's an ITMS problem. I don't have an ATV but I do buy videos
I agree. I do have an Apple TV, and I buy videos (limited to "The Office"), and yes, the video quality of ITMS is less than DVD. However, I've found that that the Apple TV displays ITMS content better than my video iPod connected to the same TV.
Photos in the screen saver or browsing look incredible, so it's definitely an ITMS video quality issue, not an Apple TV issue.
I think there needs to be more emphasis on the "relativity" part, which requires an observer.
From your example, there are three people that we need to be concerned about:
1. Thrower (traveling at c-1 mph or 185,999 miles/sec or
2. Catcher (traveling at c-1 mph or 185,999 miles/sec)
3. the observer (frame of reference, so traveling at 0 miles per sec in relation to the others)
To the thrower, the ball is traveling at 0.022 miles per second (80 miles per hour). Wait, that's too slow. I'll change your example.
Let's say you fired a gun where the bullet fires at 0.1c (you used LOTS of gunpowder here). To People 1 and 2, the bullet would fire at 0.1c. The problem is person 3 (the observer).
Newtonian physics would suggest that the total speed from the observer's standpoint is
Part of Relativity is the fact that there is no absolute frame of reference. I'm not sure if the handwaving on a bus example (further up this thread) works, because it doesn't take advantage of what the observer would see.
> the Beatles never happened for me
Agreed. I like a lot of music from that era, but The Beatles never clicked for me. I have about a dozen of their songs, but the only full CD I bought was Sgt. Peppers. It has a many good songs, but it's got some duds in my opinion (Lovely Rita, Fixing a Hole, Getting Better, specifically).
On the other hand, I really like the song "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," so being able to buy a few Beatles songs makes sense.
It looks like he did a lot of work, and it looks authentic.
However, there's one photo missing: one of these days, he'll have to sell that house. I want a picture of the real estate agent's face when they see that room!
"Captain, property values have slowed to impulse power."