czr80

Sure, just like December is the tenth month of the year.

As part of the war reparations, the Weimar republic had to pay back debt demoninated in gold and foreign currency. Same problem as Greece (or Argentina, to pick another case). Wikipedia has a good write up.

Comparing the US, a huge resource-rich country with its own currency, to a tiny resource-poor european country that does not control its own currency is complete and utter nonsense.

To pay back its debt all the US government needs is dollars, and hey, look, the US government controls the supply of dollars.

To pay back its debt, the Greek government needs euros, and, oh, the ECB controls the supply of euros. Oops.

If you say the US can't print money because it will cause inflation - well, in the current climate you'd still be wrong, but let's address one issue at a time. The bottom line is that the US and Greece are fundamentally different, and comparisons between them are simply wrong.

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"

One example, there are many:

These guys certainly knew their stuff, and they also had a system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

I can confidently predict that no, you won't make 15-20 percent as a long term average, though you may well manage a number of good years in a row. Save while the going is good.

Aspire to solve problems.

It's interesting to note that choosing not to worry about those things ("privacy, authentication, authenticity") were very much design choices - perhaps the most consequential design choices ever?

What white men never get, and this is just an observation, I have no sides or deep interest in this mess, is a comment like: "this makes me re-think hiring white men, they're not worth the drama". I've seen a few of those around the place regarding Ms Richards.

You're right, the marginal cost argument is wrong, and yet there is something different going on here and I think I know what it is: The fundamental change here is that customers own the means of reproducing the product and reproduction costs are equal to the marginal cost. How much could Apple sell an iPhone for if the same was true? What would Apple do to remain in business?

That may be true as the reason, but I cannot believe they could misjudge the importance of Reader to its users - they have all the logs and know exactly what the usage is. They just decided they didn't care enough, and could accept the negative publicity.

Not really true - it's relatively easy to make the diamonds colorless. Biggest difference is that the diamonds tend to have crystal structures that are a little rare in natural diamonds, since they grow very quickly compared to natural diamonds.

Yeah, they should spend money on something sensible, like a Porsche.

What a fascinating comment: "expensive time of advanced users"? As if knowing what, say, SSL 3.0 means is somehow a marker of a more valuable person, more worthy of not having their time wasted.

It might be good for you to remember that those "masses" are just people with other things to do with their lives - they're doctors, lawyers, concert violinists, nuclear physicists, biologists, teachers, ... and they just want their damned browser to work without having to mess around, and preferably not break with cryptic error messages they don't care about, because, frankly, they have better things to do.

That's an interesting comparison... it actually strikes me that Google Reader is much harder for me to replace than Google search. Switching to Bing would be easy, whereas Reader was something I'd integrated into my life, and which I'd curated for myself.

This is Google Sets, and I recall Google making a big splash about that, seemingly as a way to respond to Wolfram Alpha, which had just launched.

Tog wrote about implementing this in MacOS: http://www.asktog.com/readerMail/2000-07ReaderMail.html#Anch...

There is a certain irony in calling out a Google product for mangling their source name - consider it a company tradition!

Actually, I find it perfectly comprehensible when said aloud with the right emphasis and pacing - it's only difficult to understand when written down with no punctuation.

Out of curiosity, what happens when you walk into an "undesirable"?

People also said that the Segway was going to revolutionize the world.

Interestingly, this is how it works today. All federally funded researchers are required to provide detailed research reports, and these are freely available.

Honestly, I would pay money to see BoA rebrand to Moolah.com

Really? The number one pre-requisite? I think you're greatly overestimating how much the general population shares your particular hobbies.

Elsevier and other large publishers publish many journals on behalf of societies, so the distinction between the interests of professional organisations and publishers doesn't really work.

If that's all they wanted it would be easy - just post it on a blog. What they really want is access to the journal infrastructure - I'm reminded of the French newspapers who want Google to pay them for inclusion in Google news, on the basis that they produce the content.

Well, for what it's worth publishers are responsible for maintaining those editorial boards, over time periods much longer than academic careers. They care about the long term sustainability of the journals for commercial reasons, of course.

I think the real difference here is not so much that the marginal cost of digital goods is low, but that customers also own the means of reproduction. That is the fundamental difference that leads to arguments over rights, and then to arguments over morals, as these things often do.

Author != Submitter

Your concerns implicitly depend on productivity per worker remaining constant over time. As that is not true, it's not clear that the changing retiree to worker ratio is as big a problem as you claim.