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Hello, World

m.whitehouse.gov

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Re: Hello, World

#51

Post by javert »

hkmurakami wrote: post #50
javert wrote: post #49

I have zero respect for someone who would take a role like that.

So you have no respect for a researcher who took rhe stand against Microsoft in the Microsoft antitrust case?

Absolutely. That makes him even worse.

"Antitrust" is a bogus concept.

It is never and was never in the public interest.

It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders.

Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent.

This is an example of the point that there is no such thing as a monopoly unless it's created through legal channels (i.e. is granted by the government).

There is no business that can't be competed against with sufficient capital.

And the global economy accumulates spare capital over time (because in the net, the species produces more than it consumes).

Even "natural monopolies" are a function of a mistaken way to implement property rights, as opposed to being "natural." Because you can always build underneath or around whatever is already there.

edit: This is a serious intellectual comment that deserves to be read. It also matters a lot for our industry. Consider Google in Europe right now.

Re: Hello, World

#54

Post by mappu »

javert wrote: post #51
hkmurakami wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have no respect for a researcher who took rhe stand against Microsoft in the Microsoft antitrust case?

Absolutely. That makes him even worse. "Antitrust" is a bogus concept. It is never and was never in the public interest. It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders. Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent. This is…

Most "free" markets don't have perfect competition, nor perfect information, nor rational actors. It's possible for Microsoft to provide a terrible service and for no better competitors to emerge.

Consider last-mile telephone lines. It's wasteful to have ten companies each spend billions of dollars digging up the same roads to lay the same cables - and it's a nearly-impossible barrier to entry for new competitors. Sure, anything is possible with "sufficient capital", but fundamentally it's an inefficient waste of time and investor money to recreate a service that already exists, and the investors will be correspondingly scarce.

Most countries have enacted legislation enforcing fairly shared use of such lines (breaking up monopolies in the process) because cooperation is fundamentally more efficient than competition as effort is not wasted in duplication.

As a result, the ISP/telco market in civilized countries has since escaped from that stagnant local maxima with its high barrier-of-entry, to a more agile, more competitive state where smaller players have a fair chance of competing. I'm not sure if this includes the USA though (c.f. Comcast/TWC merger complaints, single-ISP areas, the "Worst company in america" award, unending complaints on /r/technology &c).

Re: Hello, World

#55

Post by marvy »

javert wrote: post #51
hkmurakami wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have no respect for a researcher who took rhe stand against Microsoft in the Microsoft antitrust case?

Absolutely. That makes him even worse. "Antitrust" is a bogus concept. It is never and was never in the public interest. It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders. Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent. This is…

Ok, I've read it. I agree it is serious. But I think it's also wrong. Monopolies can be abused in ways that make it almost impossible to compete against them. Let's use Windows as an example. Some companies that sell Windows boxes also sell Linux boxes. (Dell for example.) Of course, the Linux boxes are less popular. But why not sell a computer that can dual boot? People would be a lot more willing to experiment with Linux if they didn't have to install it themselves. Indeed, around 1999 a young company was trying to popularize its new operating system: BeOS. I am quoting from this site:

http://birdhouse.org/beos/byte/30-bootloader/

"[...] Be was engaged in enthusiastic discussions with Dell, Compaq, Micron, and Hitachi. Taken together, pre-installation arrangements with vendors of this magnitude could have had a major impact on the future of Be and BeOS. But of the four, only Hitachi actually shipped a machine with BeOS pre-installed. The rest apparently backed off after a closer reading of the fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements. Hitachi did ship a line of machines (the Flora Prius) with BeOS pre-installed, but made changes to the bootloader -- rendering BeOS invisible to the consumer -- before shipping. Apparently, Hitachi received a little visit from Microsoft just before shipping the Flora Prius, and were reminded of the terms of the license."

Re: Hello, World

#57

Post by lifeformed »

javert wrote: post #51
hkmurakami wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you have no respect for a researcher who took rhe stand against Microsoft in the Microsoft antitrust case?

Absolutely. That makes him even worse. "Antitrust" is a bogus concept. It is never and was never in the public interest. It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders. Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent. This is…

Why is more important to stick to an ideology than to find pragmatic solutions to problems?

Re: Hello, World

#58

Post by bbcbasic »

furyofantares wrote: post #5
SMackinnon wrote: post #3

Spoiler: Bob always chooses the same as his flip, Alice always chooses the opposite of her flip. B A H H - Bob chooses heads, Win H T - Alice chooses heads, Win T H - Alice chooses tails, Win T T - Bob chooses tails, Win

My experience arriving at this solution made me a bit curious as to how others solved it. Was there reasoning involved before you arrived at a strategy and verified it, or did the strategy just come to you? Did you try multiple strategies, and if so, was there a method to generating/iterating on them, or were they just coming to you and you tried them?

Alice and bob can then either do one of 3 (rational!) things - stick to a prior choice, guess their flip result, or guess the opposite of their flip result.

Both of them sticking to prior choice was shown not to work, leaving 8 permutations to investigate at most. But it is easier than that.

I started by assuming Alice will guess her flip result. Looking at the truth table

    A B
    h h :-)
    h t :-(
    t h :-(
    t t :-)
This means the only losing possibilities are when the coins are different. Therefore Bob must guess the opposite of his flip result, to ensure no losing possibilities at all.

Re: Hello, World

#59

Post by javert »

lifeformed wrote: post #57
javert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. That makes him even worse. "Antitrust" is a bogus concept. It is never and was never in the public interest. It is also a massive violation of the rights of companies and their shareholders. Consider that if Windows/IE were really that bad, people would have just switched more readily to a Microsoft competitor. Desktop-quality Linux would have come about/come about sooner, or something equivalent. This is…

Why is more important to stick to an ideology than to find pragmatic solutions to problems?

That's not the way I work. And you can see that from my statement. I don't invoke any moral principles to make my case. It's all pretty down to earth.

edit: Actually, to elaborate...

A better way to put it: I go from the ground up, not the top down.

Most ideologies go top-down, which is utterly futile and is why people believe there is a dichotomy between the moral and the practical, i.e., principles and pragmatism.

Going top-down produces ideologies that are floating abstractions. Castles in the air. They end up being more constricting then they are empowering. Nearly every ideology you have ever heard of is like this. That is why you reject ideology.

If you do it from the ground up, you get an entirely different result.

Re: Hello, World

#60

Post by bsaul »

callahad wrote: post #38
furyofantares wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience arriving at this solution made me a bit curious as to how others solved it. Was there reasoning involved before you arrived at a strategy and verified it, or did the strategy just come to you? Did you try multiple strategies, and if so, was there a method to generating/iterating on them, or were they just coming to you and you tried them?

My thought process: It seemed obvious that fixed-guess strategies couldn't work, both from the proof in the article and from intuition that the inverse of your fixed guesses will always represent a failure case. If a fixed strategy can't work, then the guesses must be decided dynamically. At the time the guess is made, only one bit of information (their own flip) is available to each participant, so each guess has to…

Exact same here. Thanks for analysing this though, because i had trouble rethinking my own process. I more had the feeling to try things a bit randomly and eliminate ranges of similar choices. But in fact it wasn't random, it did follow the exact train of thoughts you described, in that order.
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