Not everything with an average negative rate return is stupid. Homeowner's insurance, for example, has an expected negative rate of return. People like high positive skewness and dislike low negative skewness. I buy insurance as an investment that eliminates high negative skewness and lotto tickets as a an investment that has high positive skewness. I know the odds but enjoy the way it's skewed.
If I had a dime for everything that would "never work online" that has since gone online, I'd be a rich man. Shoes, clothes, and jewelery, all are sold online and they were supposed to be too tactile too. I remember a company that refused to let me build their website in 1997 because a consultant told them that the Internet was too insecure for "real business." He laughed when I predicted that one day he would bank online and convinced them to private label a dial in BBS instead. I built their website a year later. BTW I pre-ordered my Motorola Droid sight unseen so I could get it on the release date.
Just last week I called Comcast to drop the TV service (but retain net access) which I have not used in over two years; the cable is not even plugged into a television. First they put me on hold for a while, then made me verify my identity via their automated system, then again verbally when I finally got an agent. The agent argued that I shouldn't cancel because I was getting a discount based on having two services (though he failed to mention that I would be paying $4 a month to keep even the basic service once they raise the price on June 1st). When I insisted on dropping the service the agent, in an annoyed voice, said fine he'd disconnect it, but there was a fee to do so. When I told him that I thought that was ridiculous he began a debate. His justification "Comcast is just doing what any other company would do." "Perhaps any other company with an effective monopoly," I thought.
A couple of weeks ago I called to change the credit card number for autopay. The agent I spoke to was not allowed to take a credit card number over the phone - I had to do that on their website. I didn't have my password but she couldn't help me with that because that was another department's job. In all simply changing the card number took two calls and half an hour.
There is still plenty of room for improvement in customer service.
The government can forecast over a ten year period as well as wall street can forecast next quarter or programmers can budget time for large projects. That leaves us with a choice, we can accept that our government (which for all its flaws created the worlds largest middle class) is imperfect like every other human endeavor or become like Somalia where you can defend yourself, educate your own kids, make your own roads, and nobody will ever take a dime of what is yours.
Yeah, but a religious world view rests on faith. Religious nuts encourage strong faith, which is belief even in the face of overwhelming evidence that you are wrong. It is that reliance on strong faith that leads to so much excessive evil on the part of the aforementioned zealots.
Linden labs would love people to experience the net through their virtual world, much the way many experience most of it through a browser today. In many of the posts I've read Second Life is being criticized for being slow and buggy and not a great way to experience the net. As a result businesses try it and flee (There are other reasons too, lost inventory that can't be backed up is a big one).
LL keeps butting their head against the wall, trying to get this complex, bandwidth and processor intensive world to be a place for business but it is futile.
When viewed as a social venue, which allows creativity, building, live music, and more it's a fabulous place. I have made great friends in Second Life. Looked at as a social game, its a wild success; if only the Lindens would realize that and stop trying to turn it into something it is not and never will be.
They could improve the predictive value immensely if they allowed me and my wife to each rank the movies we watch together separately. With the current system, some movies are rated by just me, some by just her, and some have a consensus rating. It leads to a dataset full of garbage.
It would, but it is an expensive way to publicly disclose an idea. It does, however, allow you to legally use the words "patent pending", which allowed me to make people wonder if I'm poking fun at business process patents with http://ignoranceoffsets.com/ Not that business method patents are what they once were.
I had what I thought was a very good idea, so I created a demo and pitched it to a company that I wanted to hire me to implement it. They recognized that it was a good idea and half way through the demo realized that I could pitch it to one of their competitors, that I had a good running start, and that being first to market had advantages. They had ideas too, so they stopped the demo, brought in their corporate counsel and insisted on a mutual NDA before continuing. Eventually they decided to steal the idea and have someone else implement it, but there was that pesky NDA. They bought me out, hired me as a consultant, and eventually, after their other vendor failed, let me implement it. It was the most lucrative idea I ever had.
So, in my case (plural of anecdote is not data) fear of having you work with the competition is a good reason to sign an NDA.
Which is why I have tirelessly advocated for the teaching of alternative viewpoints to the THEORY of heliocentrism. This "scientific" theory has been contested since the 1600s. I now know that my failure to get an appointment in a high class academic institution in astronomy or geocentric universe studies is clearly another example of how genuine debate is stifled by the scientific establishment.
--
David
http://teachthecontroversy.com/
The way you have framed the question is completely wrong.
You are overly concerned with rules and regulations. The invisible hand of the market will take care of it, just as it takes care of all problems. Those companies that aren't secure enough will go out of business when they've been hacked enough.
The silly rules just delay and impede the invisible hand. You should be fighting against all the silly mandates and let the market decide the optimal level of security.
Now, go ahead and flame me because I'm not politically correct.
In short, the money in a networked economy does not go to the people doing the work. Rather it follows the path of who controls the view, and that path has its own circuits.
This is so true. Let me try to give a better example than Douglas Adams and hitchhikers. I have just put up a website, with a few more to follow. The first is a business valuation calculator http://freevaluationsonline.com/. I'd like to believe that I can make money on this, through donations, advertising, offering consulting services, keeping it up to date, or something other than charging for content.
But, to get traffic I need to go through Google Adwords - cost me about a buck to get someone to do a valuation - a steep price to get back for free. The site provides immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, and accessibility already. I'm going to enhance the site, to provide more of the above, but I think that those who control the pipes (Google, Yahoo, et al) will make 100 times what I do.
Young kids need exercise to build themselves up, and they won't get it by sitting on their backsides playing games. If you can't figure that one out for yourself 'expert' advice won't do jack.
Young kids need a lot of things, including a fun way to learn to read and write. I started all three of my kids on computer games at one year old and it has helped them all. Every kid is different. The oldest could read at 18 months, the middle is still working on it at six years - but in both cases I know the computer helped them. My youngest (age 2.5) can already recognize some letters and thanks to Times Attack can do multiplication up to 3X5 (by rote - no understanding there yet).
I would guess that two of the three get at least half of their exercise from Dance Dance revolution which they play for 30 aerobic minutes most days. They work up quite a sweat. All three are underweight; not because we police their diet tightly, not because they exercise a lot; I'd guess it's because of genetics and drugs.
Nobody is amused. I tried to make it auditable, allow the user to retain the tax deduction, and so on. I've bought advertising on bidvertiser. So far, not a single donation. Nothing seems to have the karma of Carbon.
Slashdot Mirror
Not everything with an average negative rate return is stupid. Homeowner's insurance, for example, has an expected negative rate of return. People like high positive skewness and dislike low negative skewness. I buy insurance as an investment that eliminates high negative skewness and lotto tickets as a an investment that has high positive skewness. I know the odds but enjoy the way it's skewed.
See where that business model got Blockbuster once Netflix let people not worry about late fees.
If I had a dime for everything that would "never work online" that has since gone online, I'd be a rich man. Shoes, clothes, and jewelery, all are sold online and they were supposed to be too tactile too. I remember a company that refused to let me build their website in 1997 because a consultant told them that the Internet was too insecure for "real business." He laughed when I predicted that one day he would bank online and convinced them to private label a dial in BBS instead. I built their website a year later. BTW I pre-ordered my Motorola Droid sight unseen so I could get it on the release date.
Just last week I called Comcast to drop the TV service (but retain net access) which I have not used in over two years; the cable is not even plugged into a television. First they put me on hold for a while, then made me verify my identity via their automated system, then again verbally when I finally got an agent. The agent argued that I shouldn't cancel because I was getting a discount based on having two services (though he failed to mention that I would be paying $4 a month to keep even the basic service once they raise the price on June 1st). When I insisted on dropping the service the agent, in an annoyed voice, said fine he'd disconnect it, but there was a fee to do so. When I told him that I thought that was ridiculous he began a debate. His justification "Comcast is just doing what any other company would do." "Perhaps any other company with an effective monopoly," I thought. A couple of weeks ago I called to change the credit card number for autopay. The agent I spoke to was not allowed to take a credit card number over the phone - I had to do that on their website. I didn't have my password but she couldn't help me with that because that was another department's job. In all simply changing the card number took two calls and half an hour. There is still plenty of room for improvement in customer service.
but the photos are only of where the balloon landed. A better dad would have shown them how to use GPS and a timer. At least we answered the question "Where does the wind go?" http://www.ualconsulting.com/joshua-and-ari/weatherballoon.htm
The government can forecast over a ten year period as well as wall street can forecast next quarter or programmers can budget time for large projects. That leaves us with a choice, we can accept that our government (which for all its flaws created the worlds largest middle class) is imperfect like every other human endeavor or become like Somalia where you can defend yourself, educate your own kids, make your own roads, and nobody will ever take a dime of what is yours.
Yeah, but a religious world view rests on faith. Religious nuts encourage strong faith, which is belief even in the face of overwhelming evidence that you are wrong. It is that reliance on strong faith that leads to so much excessive evil on the part of the aforementioned zealots.
when she saves me money by spending it.
Linden labs would love people to experience the net through their virtual world, much the way many experience most of it through a browser today. In many of the posts I've read Second Life is being criticized for being slow and buggy and not a great way to experience the net. As a result businesses try it and flee (There are other reasons too, lost inventory that can't be backed up is a big one). LL keeps butting their head against the wall, trying to get this complex, bandwidth and processor intensive world to be a place for business but it is futile. When viewed as a social venue, which allows creativity, building, live music, and more it's a fabulous place. I have made great friends in Second Life. Looked at as a social game, its a wild success; if only the Lindens would realize that and stop trying to turn it into something it is not and never will be.
They could improve the predictive value immensely if they allowed me and my wife to each rank the movies we watch together separately. With the current system, some movies are rated by just me, some by just her, and some have a consensus rating. It leads to a dataset full of garbage.
It would, but it is an expensive way to publicly disclose an idea. It does, however, allow you to legally use the words "patent pending", which allowed me to make people wonder if I'm poking fun at business process patents with http://ignoranceoffsets.com/ Not that business method patents are what they once were.
I assume you mean a provisional patent, in which case, remember that it starts a clock ticking. You have 12 months to file a regular application.
I had what I thought was a very good idea, so I created a demo and pitched it to a company that I wanted to hire me to implement it. They recognized that it was a good idea and half way through the demo realized that I could pitch it to one of their competitors, that I had a good running start, and that being first to market had advantages. They had ideas too, so they stopped the demo, brought in their corporate counsel and insisted on a mutual NDA before continuing. Eventually they decided to steal the idea and have someone else implement it, but there was that pesky NDA. They bought me out, hired me as a consultant, and eventually, after their other vendor failed, let me implement it. It was the most lucrative idea I ever had. So, in my case (plural of anecdote is not data) fear of having you work with the competition is a good reason to sign an NDA.
Which is why I have tirelessly advocated for the teaching of alternative viewpoints to the THEORY of heliocentrism. This "scientific" theory has been contested since the 1600s. I now know that my failure to get an appointment in a high class academic institution in astronomy or geocentric universe studies is clearly another example of how genuine debate is stifled by the scientific establishment. -- David http://teachthecontroversy.com/
The way you have framed the question is completely wrong. You are overly concerned with rules and regulations. The invisible hand of the market will take care of it, just as it takes care of all problems. Those companies that aren't secure enough will go out of business when they've been hacked enough. The silly rules just delay and impede the invisible hand. You should be fighting against all the silly mandates and let the market decide the optimal level of security. Now, go ahead and flame me because I'm not politically correct.
This is so true. Let me try to give a better example than Douglas Adams and hitchhikers. I have just put up a website, with a few more to follow. The first is a business valuation calculator http://freevaluationsonline.com/. I'd like to believe that I can make money on this, through donations, advertising, offering consulting services, keeping it up to date, or something other than charging for content.
But, to get traffic I need to go through Google Adwords - cost me about a buck to get someone to do a valuation - a steep price to get back for free. The site provides immediacy, personalization, interpretation, authenticity, and accessibility already. I'm going to enhance the site, to provide more of the above, but I think that those who control the pipes (Google, Yahoo, et al) will make 100 times what I do.
You're better off using an open source template. There's a big collection at http://www.oswd.org/
On slashdot I figured someone would have already castigated LEGO. They blocked them from the Netherlands, http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2005/07/13/lego-mega050713.html But not from Canada http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2005/11/17/megabloks-051117.html but in any case their harassment discouraged competition.
Young kids need exercise to build themselves up, and they won't get it by sitting on their backsides playing games. If you can't figure that one out for yourself 'expert' advice won't do jack. Young kids need a lot of things, including a fun way to learn to read and write. I started all three of my kids on computer games at one year old and it has helped them all. Every kid is different. The oldest could read at 18 months, the middle is still working on it at six years - but in both cases I know the computer helped them. My youngest (age 2.5) can already recognize some letters and thanks to Times Attack can do multiplication up to 3X5 (by rote - no understanding there yet). I would guess that two of the three get at least half of their exercise from Dance Dance revolution which they play for 30 aerobic minutes most days. They work up quite a sweat. All three are underweight; not because we police their diet tightly, not because they exercise a lot; I'd guess it's because of genetics and drugs.
Good luck! I created an ignorance offset program http://www.ignoranceoffsets.com/ and abstinance offsets http://www.ignoranceoffsets.com/abstainer/
Nobody is amused. I tried to make it auditable, allow the user to retain the tax deduction, and so on. I've bought advertising on bidvertiser. So far, not a single donation. Nothing seems to have the karma of Carbon.