Right. It's been rare in recent decades for even individual companies to sell for less than their asset value, for precisely the reason you mention: that nearly any functioning business is worth more than the sum of its assets. The canonical example is Coca-Cola (KO), which Yahoo Finance indicates is currently selling for a price-to-book ratio of 6.28. Should we expect something like the Coca-Cola company, which has had a strong business for over a hundred years consisting of a brand name known worldwide, a worldwide distribution system, and of course its famous "secret formuler" to sell for just the price of its property, plant, and equipment? Of course, Coke is an extreme example, but it illustrates a point that could be made less emphatically for nearly any successful business.

Although I don't disagree that the market is fully valued or even over-valued at the moment, this single q statistic isn't any reason to panic. As indicated in TFS, it's attributable in large part to near-zero interest rates. With nowhere else to go to earn money, investors flock to the stock market. That certainly has some potential for inducing a bubble, but I don't think we're there yet. These extremely low interest rates can't last forever, but since they're controlled by policymakers who are keenly aware of the implication of raising them, no interest-hike-induced stock market panic is likely to ensue. So, move along Citizens.

Which reminds me...I sure got tired of all the "Anthony Wiener" jokes a while back, but just think of how much fun we'll be missing: we won't have Letterman to kick him around anymore [sniffle].

Coincidentally, just before I read this, I played "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" in a Baroque style using the harpsichord voice of my electronic piano. If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.

Then again, I also played it in a ragtime style using the "honky tonk piano" voice. It ain't exactly the Mrs. Mills piano, but it's what I've got.

Actually, I'm not arguing that "The Wall" was their peak, simply that there was nowhere to go afterwards. I agree with you that "Dark Side of the Moon" was better or maybe more groundbreaking in some ways. Still, it's like asking which one of your children you love the most: you love them all, each for what are, even though they're all different.

My point on The Wall was simply that there wasn't anyway to expand the scale what had been done in Rock n' Roll. It kept a coherent theme album going for two whole records. I'm not sure anybody has done that before or since. I guess you could do that for three or four records, but AFAIK, nobody has tried.

The only thing to do, then, was to keep doing variations on the same, or to switch to a new genre. We've seen both. I'm not saying that everything that's been done in Rock n' Roll since The Wall lacks value, just that there was no way to take Rock n' Roll genuinely further. Thus, its decline.

Then again, you're hearing that from an old guy. What are these young kids thinkin' nowadays?

May I make that 1979? I've long held the theory that Rock n' Roll reached its logical conclusion in 1979 when Pink Floyd released "The Wall." There was nowhere to go after that.

This adequately explains, for example, the emergence of rap and hip-hop in recent years, which are distinguished from prior popular music by the explicit absence of singing. It also explains why the current generation embraces the music of their parents, a.k.a "Classic Rock", rather than rejecting it - as did every prior generation. (Remember when your parents' music used to sound "old fashioned" or "corny?")

That said, I've come to appreciate music from the 1920s - 1950s, which predates me by a generation or two. Oh, and of course, there's also Classic Classical. That goes back several generations further.

I wouldn't state all this as a scientific fact, though - it's more of a theory.

This is a good observation. Perhaps something like Wikipedia, which has been a big success of written "documentation", draws from a very large user base, so the small percentage of people who write still results in a lot of text. It also has a very low barrier to contributing (or at least used to...) For example, I've contributed a large number of small edits to Wikipedia over the years but have never actually written an article, except one I started about some short-lived, long-forgotten David Pogue TV show (good riddance.)

I think the wiki format is modestly successful even in smaller venues, such as an internal corporate wiki, due to this low barrier to entry. Of course, many wikis also are available as de facto documentation for open source projects, and those seem to be more successful in general than the traditional manual-written-by-the-author. We're also seeing free ebooks springing up as manuals (e.g. ), which often are written by folks who are unconnected with the applicable software project.

Now, let's be nice - maybe it's just someone who's trying to help out his fellow 2.5 GPA'er. Those folks are quite sociable, ya know.

I'm not sure if I'll connect EVERYTHING. However, I plan to connect at least my refrigerator to the Internet in order to give the power to curdle my milk to Kim Jong Un. If he makes use of that, then Snap, Crackle, Pop and I will know for certain that he's truly EVIL.

"...using treated sewage to create drinking water is a proposition that has proved difficult for customers to swallow."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... . Also, my apologies for spelling "Dolores" wrong.

I had remembered that there was a small, Eastern European country that has a population of around 3 million and occupies about 13,000 square miles of territory. But I couldn't remember its name up until now - only that it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy.

I've seen this in some cases, and in other cases I've seen people with relatively little experience starting out with good instincts. So, I think those instincts are partly a talent and partly drawn from experience.

The thing that I have as an "old guy" with lots of experience that I see lacking in some younger folks is a keen sense of design - knowing what's good and bad. The common failure of young designers is that they don't actively seek out simplicity, and they don't know techniques of how to achieve it. They also don't understand Gall's Law:

Of course, my points are generalizations that don't apply in every case. I'm sure you could find an old guy with experience who never learned such lessons.

Experience also allows you to solve some problems quickly that an inexperienced person might take much longer to solve - or might never be able to solve at all. So, as a veteran engineer who is surrounded by very bright and much younger people at work, I've come to believe that when my employer pays me extra for my experience, they're not getting a bad deal.

As with any big success, it seems that the success of Linux must be attributed to multiple factors, of which you make a very good case for some of the most important.

That said, in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", a lot of credit is also given to Linus for inventing the Bazaar model of software development.

I've watched Python carefully over the years, and I think the success of Python can be most strongly attributed to technical factors, that is, the design of Python itself. However, it's also clear that the social skills of Guido van Rossum in terms of carefully and persistently building a community also must be a big factor. It seems you need both. Probably true for Linux and Linus as well.

That may also explain why certain Software Foundations we shall not name whose leaders lack social skills have never developed into a true "community", except in the abstract sense of various disparate groups rallying around some of the same flags.

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Then again, once time and chance happeneth, being wise, understanding, and skillful don't hurt.

To quote Adam Smith:

So, if you're making six figures writing Perl, are you sure you're being adequately compensated for its disagreeableness? :)