mschy

I'd call him a nutter, but I don't think that's true. I think he's a smart fellow who recognizes that editorials that take extreme stances sell better than ones that don't... and hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Like his venture 'Fifteen' that is not only a top restaurant, but also a program for troubled youth? Or more like the half-dozen or so "Jamie's Italian" that have opened?

Or like the dozens of additional "Jamie's Italian" that are planned for Europe and Asia in the next couple years?

Come on, Joel. If you're going to use a metaphor, please make sure it fits... at least a little. Jamie Oliver is already executing on the exact thing you say he can't do; creating a repeatable process to make delicious food and opening a chain of restaurants that sell it.

This has nothing to do with breaking crypto. The breaking is done in an oubliette.

Well... I'm sure somebody has submitted one. We just need for them to kindly report back.

The opinions of those who are later on that curve are not more valid than the opinions of those who are sooner on it, or vice versa.

The people who advocate action sooner do not disbelieve in innovation. They just have different risk and utility functions, and these result in different advocated actions.

If you leave your building hooked up to an open tunnel line, something could come in through it. And that something could be water (or gas, or rodents...).

Claiming that's "totally" the city's fault strikes me as a dangerous abdication of personal responsibility.

The "Peak Oil" crowd as I understand them, are concerned that oil field production will stop growing, while demand continues to rise, and the price of oil could grow fairly rapidly, with hard to predict economic effects.

As such, they tend to advocate the development of higher efficiency consumption and exploration of alternative forms of energy while oil is still cheap. It's basically a position that calls on innovation today to avoid a problem altogether, or to soften the blow by laying some groundwork.

You clearly prefer a position where you don't innovate until your back is against the wall, and you mock anybody who does it earlier, and accuse them of not believing in innovation.

Whatever. I don't even care.

- Q causes asthma. - I own a factory. - That factory is cheaper to operate if it emits Q than if it doesn't.

This is an externality.

If I emit Q, I gain profit, and others take a loss, as they have to deal with the medical bills, and reduced quality of life associated with asthma. If I am never forced to pay for this, it's an uncaptured externality, meaning that effectively, I'm paying too little to emit Q.

There's no arbitrage opportunity, the only way to stop me from emitting Q is to find a way to capture the externality. In the United States, this would probably occur either via a lawsuit that attempted to make things right, or I'd simply be stopped via regulation that prohibited the emission of Q at unsafe levels.

The general criticism against fossil fuels is that they have a similar, but harder to quantify issue. Scientists generally agree that changing the atmosphere changes weather and hydrology in somewhat hard to predict ways. This means that whenever you add carbon, you're really increasing the risk of expensive problems. As a simple example, if you raise the ocean level by even a foot or three, there are huge amounts of infrastructure that are suddenly underwater, or that need expensive protection.

Or perhaps the additional carbon causes weather patterns to change in manner that leaves the Dongjiang basin dry. Then a large area is useless for agriculture and industry, and the existing infrastructure is devalued.

But I can burn oil all day, and I don't actually pay for those damages. They're uncaptured externalities. My use of oil is cheaper than it really should be, because it doesn't reflect all the costs.

As such, there's nothing to arbitrage.

* How do you suppose these conservationists aim to correct these "externalities"?*

Generally speaking, the goal is to come up with some sort of estimate on what costs are being incurred to others, and then apply that charge.

An example of a situation where this worked very well was with SO2 in the United States. Sulphur Dioxide emissions were causing acid rain, which caused a number of harms to others. As such, the government set a limit as to the total amount of SO2 that could be emitted, and created a market where companies could bid for the right to emit that SO2.

This encouraged companies to innovate, and find ways to reduce SO2 emissions. It worked incredibly well, costing companies far less than anticipated, and essentially solved the SO2 emission problem in the US, reducing it to levels that don't cause meaningful damages.

That merely goes back to proving the point that the markets themselves create the incentives for resources allocation - ie innovate and adapt and for this reason it has been historically foolish to bet that we will run out of a given resource.

You're seeing what you want to see. Markets are not perfect problem-solving devices. The price of oil reflects only the costs to get it from the ground, and the demand to burn it right now. It does not include the portion of the harm that may be accumulate from billions of people burning oil every day for decades.

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edit: and you see how bad people are with understanding the financial impacts of long-range things all the time. An easy example is to look at how poorly insulated many houses are, even in cold climates. The homeowners could spend $1,000 on insulation and save $600/yr for the next 15 years, but they don't do so, because the true price isn't sufficiently transparent.

But blaming the city for everything still strikes me as absurd. It was a private enterprise that dug tunnels without getting permits from the city, and it created a problem.

Saying it's totally the city government's fault strikes me as nonsense given that reality.

I'll grant them some responsibility, because government does tend to clean up when private industry leaves a mess, but it seems far from total to me.

It is also totally the city's fault that the previous participants in the Chicago Tunnel Company's experiment didn't protect themselves against a flood in that infrastructure.

It is totally the city's fault that despite the tunnels not being a public responsibility, they had started a bidding process to get the leak fixed, though it wasn't completed before the flood.

Yeah... totally the city's fault.

Reader's note: There are elements of sarcasm in my post.

iSuppli isn't responsible if daringfireball (or anybody else) mangles their actual statements.

I'll stand my statement that you are dishonest, and at your suggestion I'll add an addendum that you're exaggerating the scope of iSuppli's responsibility.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/hm-says-it-will...

1) An incentive to use a preferred technology

2) A disincentive against using an unfavored technology

The basic functionalities of commodity markets aren't questioned by anybody. Implying otherwise is nonsensical.

There's a secondary argument about risk tolerance in that some people default to doing things until proven harmful, whereas others default to not doing them until proven safe, and the whole spectrum betweeen.

But that said, as far as I can tell, the heart of nearly all environmental/energy debates is "is X mispriced?", where X might be gasoline, natural gas, water, trees, or darned near anything else. I'm not sure why you choose to deny that.

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edit: full disclosure, I believe that decentralization of energy production is important for a number of reasons, and that increased diversity of energy production methods is also important for a number of reasons.

I believe this so strongly that I have invested a fairly large sum of money into a startup that works to make energy costs more transparent, and that works to help entities evaluate and integrate multiple energy sources in an intelligent and cost-effective manner.

Claiming it's a bet against that is disingenuous at best.

Yes, A is A. If you are a capitalist then you may not have any ideological compromise at all, even if it appeals to you, and even if there's strong evidence that it's a smart political and economic decision.

A is A. The world is black and white. Anybody who sees shades of grey must be killed.

Fucking nonsense, IMO.

I love that quote. It makes me think I'd get along really well with him.

The third sentence reads "This total comprises only hardware and component costs for the Nexus One itself and does not take into consideration other expenses such as manufacturing, software, box contents, accessories and royalties."

Your accusation seems spurious at best. Some might call it dishonest.

except performance problems, of course.

That strikes me as... ambitious.

Also, the whole thing seems much more 'help me out of my problem!' than 'let me do something cool for you!' I think if you want a good shot of this working, you need to frame it very differently, and find a way to provide easily communicated value to the donors.

If you're selling to NASA, Good Enough might mean you machine it to the thousandth of the inch, with the best possible materials.

If you're selling to Joe Schmoe, Good Enough might mean you machine it to the tenth of the inch, with materials purchased to trade off quality and price.

And both of those products might be just what their respective markets want, once you look at availability, price, etc.

Good Enough is Good Enough.

edit: Besides, has anybody ever seen a product where engineering didn't list ways to make it better, if given more time and money?

I disagree. You have to believe that your way is Good Enough.

Good Enough plus effective promotion equals sales. Best is a recipe for Duke Nukem Forever.

Find a portion of the target market that is unserved, or poorly served by their app, and differentiate your app to appeal to them. If this means making it narrower, good.

The only sort of competition I'd strongly discourage is straight-up head to head competition. You have to differentiate yourself somehow, even if not on a technical dimension.

If you then notify the state that they have your money (such as via http://ucp.dor.wa.gov/ ), then you can file a claim, and they'll give you the money.

Phone cards are basically just (small) deposit accounts that are withdrawn against for one particular purchase. It makes a lot of sense that they'd fall under the same law.

Your "slippery slope" example on the other hand doesn't seem to match, because ISPs charge a fixed price for daily access. They don't (currently) take a deposit and then debit that account based on usage. If they did, then it seems like it might fall under the same laws.

After all, highway driving isn't remotely interesting from a "driving" viewpoint, so I'd hardly miss it.

I've had no issues thinking that rental cars were the same, because the driving experience with "standard" cruise control and radar/laser cruise control is very obviously different.