For rsilvergun, what he thinks is reality.
When one says A, he means "I think A". Even if one says "he thinks A", he actually means "I think he thinks A".
Corollary : When one reads "if A then B", it means "if reader thinks A then B".
Furthermore I was not suggesting that workers actually become employers. I was suggesting that this is what workers should do *if* the labor market was really as lop-sided as the original poster implied (which I don't think it is).
The original poster implied the labour market is very lop-sided because he thinks so. If you suggest him something *if* the labour market is very lop-sided, for him you suggested him that something.
Your opinion on labour market matters only if you suggested something *if* TsuruchiBrian thinks the labour market is very lop-sided.
My examples were monopoly situations but the lack of "upgrades" were not because it was a monopoly
We'll never know, at least in those examples, because you chose to use monopoly examples.
"100% of peak possible demand".
Ok, let us get this out of the picture because this is mentioned a lot in your post. Chas mentioned that internet capacity is deliberately under-provisioned. For this to be false, the ISPs do not have to satisfy 100% of peak possible demand - this is completely your invention. Even if the ISPs do not invest reasonably in improving network infrastructure, knowing well as every 10 year old knows for last 10 years that internet is a growing business, the under-provisioning is DELIBERATE. It is not just because it is the failure to satisfy 100% peak possible demand.
Hope this is understood - I am ignoring rest of your references to your absurd 100% peak possible demand which no one is talking about except you.
Running 100 long distance trunks to serve a 100 person central office would be "100% peak possible demand", but it would be outrageously expensive.
People talking long distances, while a growing business, is not as much a growing business as internet services. Taxis in new urban areas, or newly prosperous areas, are a much better example and their the taxi operators at times do have enough provisions for peak demand because peak is expected to grow. This also shows that lack of monopoly made the taxi operators upgrade the fleet. You mention that ISP's reluctance in upgrading is not due to monopolies without giving any reason - except the absurd interpretation of upgrade to mean 100% peak possible capacity.
The problem here is the fact that ISP business is a situation where customers don't have a real choice.
Even were that true, it would be irrelevant.
Taxi example proves it is relevant. You do not give any reason why it is not.
And at times the demand exceeds supply. They don't buy more taxis to cover that, they can't afford it.
They do in fast growing markets.
So you're saying that Netflix has to pay to increase the capacity of the delivery system (I was Netflix in the analogy, in case you missed it.)
1. If you were Netflix in that analogy, you don't understand the situation at all. You said "I buy 100 Mbps link", and your situation had YOUR link become the bottleneck in serving 2 100 Mbps customers. Netflix situation is not like that.
2. It is not impossible for a content provider to profitably provide for increasing their customer's internet connectivity - see Google/Amazon's plans/dreams/bluffs for providing drone wifi-access points in non-connected areas, e.g. Africa. Google bid pi billion dollars to ensure "net neutrality", and is investing in Google Fiber, probably at a loss. All this had Google "invest" around less than a dollar per potential customer. If Google had much higher margin customers, they could have invested the 100 s of dollars per customer that upgrading 100 Mbps to 200Mbps requires.
Coming to your example, I didn't mention that, because typically it takes a lot more than 2 customers to be able to do such things - probably billion customers. But if the 2 customers give you enough margin, sure, why not. Netflix has nowhere close to billion customers, nor a margin enough to do that.
Earlier you said that customers don't have a choice. And now you say I would choose a different provider.
Exactly. Which is why you are having to ask who pays for upgrade. If you had a choice, it would have been upgraded by now.
They're doing it because transport providers have ALWAYS done it that way and nobody wants to pay for a system than can handle 100% of possible peak demand all the time. And it doesn't matter whose traffic it is, when the gateway that Netflix traffic passes through is congested everything going through that gateway is effected.
They don't upgrade their infrastructure if they have monopoly, or the customer has no real choice. All your examples are of monopoly situation. The problem here is the fact that ISP business is a situation where customers don't have a real choice.
Taxi operators increase their fleet in a growing market - at times they reach peak capacity. ISP is a growing business - everyone knows this for 10 years, visionaries know for 25 years.
Here's a question. I run a website with some streaming data. I buy a 100Mbps link. You and your next door neighbor both have 100Mbps service, and both of you want to stream my data at the same time. Who pays for the upgrade to my connection? Who pays for the upgrade from my ISP to your ISP? Shouldn't the people who are putting the load on the system pay for it
You pay to buy a 200 Mbps connection. If and only if you are getting sufficient margin from your customers so that you are able to afford it. If not, you don't buy and try to get that margin, or sell 50 Mbps service.
The provider you buy from, upgraded it last year because he predicted that ISP business is a growing business - it didn't need a genius to predict that. If he didn't predict, you disconnected that service and got another which did predict the obvious thing and upgraded their network.
The real problem with Net Neutrality is not that the restaurant hasn't paid the taxi, but that you are not able to choose a taxi which gives you what you pay for.
Every customer has a limited time to make the decision and to acquire data for it. Both restaurants, and websites of interest come in enormous numbers. Criteria to choose taxis come in many other forms already - condition of cars, distance from your home, whether they employ disabled drivers, politeness of the drivers, prices. If along with all these criteria comes different speeds to drive to different restaurants from different places at different times/days, it can easily cross a 100,000 point long list just for restaurants in an average city. Human beings cannot make an informed decision when the amount of information required is humongous.
This is called confusopoly. It is nearly equivalent to monopoly as far as customer choice goes. It is worse than monopoly in efficiency because it naturally loses economies of scale and a lot of effort goes in keeping up the confusion. It is the government's job to stomp out monopolies and confusopolies.
Confusopolies can be removed by forcing businesses to only differentiate themselves by criteria central to their business. Creating m*n table with all other types of businesses and defining quality of service based on that is NOT central to a taxi business.
Bikes are like women - they come in all flavours. To each his own
And you know something is wrong when they are silent.
, you originally attempted to challenge my suggestion that the studies Ambassador Kosh was seeking would be difficult to conduct, by trying to define one
No by pointing out one of the flaws in proposed vague definition.
You proposed merely to compare; it is naive.
So, learnt the meaning of "compare", have we yet? How about doing that first ? Not sure, some of the ACs, and a logged in user at least have a huge trouble with it.
but just wanted to claim that surely it would be easy to conduct.
It won't have the impossibility to conduct which a non-falsifiable problem statement provides a study. The vague problem statement had strong symptoms of non-falsifiabilty. Impossible to confirm, of course, because of the vagueness.
and by the way you haven't defined what you're comparing about them
I was pointing out that YOU didn't define the problem scientifically enough. For that, I don't need to define the problem completely, just pointing out one deficiency, and the major one at that, in your definition suffices.
Naively comparing two strains provides zero information on that
I don't recall proposing to compare naively.
Perhaps you did not explain it to them well, or perhaps you just made them up. Either way, you're blathering with pejoratives rather than engaging in reasoned discourse, which I will take as a signal that you are not up to discussing the matter further or gleaning aspects of the issue that clearly you have not thus far grasped. Perhaps your "academic friends" would be interested in discussing the issue properly; a pity you are not.
They read your post and suggested I don't waste my time with you as you clearly mentioned the "casual" academic language only in an attempt to seem important, in stronger language than I prefer to use on
And humorously a few posts into your rant about the need to define terms, you're still yet to define what you want to measure
Even before defining that, your definition had exited scientific-ness . I was just correcting that. Note that I mentioned "one of the scientific definitions
Both incorrect and irrelevant. There are vastly better ways to approach the core problem. Perhaps you should look into them sometime.
Ok, so you are unaware and unwilling to understand basic information science meaning of "compare". Sucks to be you.
When academics discuss experiments, they tend to get referred to as "small and toy" when the bounds of the experiment that are chosen in order to make it achievable also render it externally invalid
The bounds I defned do NOT make the experiment externally invalid. The hypothesis "GMO causes health issues" does not even mean anything scientifically - which strain of which species is being discussed? A scientist does not talk about vague subjects without defining them in a scientific manner. Your excuse of "casual" academic jargon just does not hold any water.
I have justified it in both posts in a manner that I'm confident other scientists would understand. If you'll forgive me for making inferences about you, from what you write I suspect that while you are a fervent supporter of science, you do not work in science. Again, that is not a pejorative, but background / lead in to why I'll phrase my explanation for you slightly differently (and more verbosely) than I would to fellow academics.
1. I talked to my academic friends about it and your explanation shocked them with its stupidity. I repeat - scientists do not talk about vague topics without defining the terms of business. Science does not even start without defining terms precisely.
2. While it may sound like a good excuse to the intellectually timid, you have exposed the idiocy of your own argument. What business do you have talking about scientific subjects without a scientific definition of the problem?
Bounding the problem to something simple (such as only comparing two strains) might make an experiment more conductible, but it also renders it externally invalid to the problem as future development of GMO is not limited to just two known strains
Only two can be compared at a time. That is fundamental information theory. Trillions can be compared two at a time, but only two at once. That is why I said two. It is not limiting the scope at all.
The problem facing the regulators is what are the risks of allowing GMO, including future genes
So you introduce the problem of a lack of time machine to make the study seem difficult. No, the argument still doesn't hold. No study can ever prove that health problems of GMO, even if they exist today, cannot be solved tomorrow by any means whatsoever. So one must start with identifying the problems of GMO, comparing 2 at a time, trying out trillions of solutions over trillions of years, and yet be unable to conclude that the problems cannot be solved.
Ok, good that Black hasn't been hijacked, yet. Appears non-derogatory and factual enough, to me.
"Desi" is the only suitable word for Indian / Pakistani / Bangladeshi combined. Asia is huge, so the small eyed Koreans / Chinese / Japanese / north -east Indians and other people from the neighborhood have got the adjective "Asian" incorrectly. Afghans, are another breed - probably there is no specific name for them because they are too busy among themselves to travel abroad much.
But "offense" is a feeling. More specifically, it is a feeling that is felt by a person who is offended. How can you possibly decide that offensiveness is determined by the person who isn't feeling the offense?
Probably the GP said it from the justiciability point of view - when can the "offended" party sue with good reason. And there, principle of mens rea has gained enough following that the GP is correct though improperly expressed.
I'm curious - how in the UK polite society refers to niggers / blacks / African Americans / coloureds ? I gather there are enough people of such description in the UK to necessitate a convenient word.
Same with my OCZ vertex 4.
Not enough, sorry. Need to know their exact DNA.
You have missed the train as far as defining hybrid according to your personal beliefs and sensibilities. Next time when a buzz word appears to gain acceptability, I suggest you spend your million dollars in "consumer education" early in the cycle.
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.
