Turning US$ 2 Billion into US$ 100 Billion in 100 years is no big deal. One just needs a 4% return above inflation. That is trivial for a good asset manager with a long term outlook.

In fact, make it into the "120 year starship program" and we will have US$ 220 Billion to play (don't you love compound interest rates?).

This is April Fools' gold:
>Without access to oxygen, bacteria cannot break down plant material. (...)
>Instead of trying to manufacture ethanol from switchgrass, would it be more effective to burn oil and bury the switchgrass? We sometimes pay farmers not to grow crops to sustain prices; should we pay them to grow otherwise useless crops and stockpile them? (...)
> Can leaves, bark and branches that are now discarded or burned be piled up instead? Is it more beneficial to recycle paper or to collect it? (...)
>The writer is the director of production planning at The Post.

LOL In the end I get it. The writer of this Washington Post article is the guy in charge of printing the paper-version of the Washington Post (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hugh-price/7/2a8/68a). And he is trying to build an argument that producing paper and stockpiling it may be the solution to the environmental problems of our times! ("Help the Planet, Get the Paper Version instead of the online version!")
Reality can be funnier than fiction.

He does have a point... a trivial one.

Big media used to be the 500 pound gorilla. These days it is more and more looking like Clint Eastwood in the movie "San Torino".

This text is great. Is it an original? I searched for some of the phrases you used in google and it sounds so...
You're spot on. Reversed Pascal's Wager into a sure bet. Congrats.

Some mainstream clothing brands with decent products I will pass by only because they have a big goofy patch or embroidered logo.

Same here. I will not pay to get a job as a walking billboard for clothing brands.

But I am not as radical as a cab driver I met, who would take out all signs from the automaker from his car. He even covered the logo at the center of the driving wheel with a red sticker... "This is not Ford's -- this is my car -- I paid for it, I am still paying for it!"

> This is why radical atheism should be considered to be a religion. Blind faith in ANYTHING can bring irrationality. Yes, not collecting stamps is not a hobby, but avoiding touching a stamp could be considered to be a hobby.

Avoiding touching a stamp is not a hobby: it is OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) -- a mental illness.
Likewise that man's defining characteristic is not religion -- he is mentally ill.

Blind faith is not the bringer of irrationality: blind faith is irrationality in itself. Saying this mad man is a man of faith is a tautology, IMHO.

And let me object to the "radical atheism" label, while we are at it. How many degrees of "no god" are there to make someone a radical atheist?

I noticed a bunch of low (even 4 digit)/. user ids in this thread -- like the guy who got the CP/M box off craigslist. I think it would be quite interesting to do a correlation between low /. user IDs and opinion on the subject. The hypothesis is that older people will have a softer spot for older machines.

Myself? I think learning to program in older machines is a great idea. But then again I learned to program in Sinclair ZX-81's BASIC language -- back when 16kb was a memory expansion...

:-))

I'd mod this up: funny.

> in the rest of the world, the iPhone has tethering as a basic non-jailbreak feature

Not in the whole rest of the world. Not here with Claro in Brazil, at least.

Is it a coincidence that I read that Adobe is losing the grip on PDF just a few days after I read Job's "Thoughts on Flash", essentially dumping Flash from iPhones/iPads, and burning it at a stake? Or is Adobe's strategy really failing spectacularly before our own eyes?

I should've seen it coming -- I haven't used Acrobat Reader for years. PDF Xchange Viewer is my current favorite, though Foxit was my first off-Adobe alternative, back when.

Even if google had half the traffic of facebook it still would trump it: google knows what you are looking for in that moment so it is able to target advertisement better. Facebook on the other hand generally only knows that you are tending to your pigs in farmville, at the moment.

Even if facebook had twice traffic, it still is an easy bet that google has more reach (as a greater % of internet users access it). Just think about age/professional profiles: you know everyone uses google. You know lots of people don't use and don't care for facebook.

Regarding the Birthday Problem,
Here goes the link to an online spreadsheet with the formulas and calculation above, if anyone wants to check and play with other inputs and scenarios:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AudbAcMEpS4ZdFcyek85bW5JZXduOUV1VlRyMEhRcHc&hl=en

Your math is perfect, I just checked the calculation. However, I think the Birthday Paradox is not the right angle here. Rather, look at it this way:

If Jack commited a crime, what are the chances that there is someone innocent with a match for Jack's DNA out there?

Well, using your same numbers, the probability is 0,0043%, or 1 in 23,300. So there is a very good (99,9957%) chance that no one in the same (town?) will have the same DNA. And even if there's a DNA match, then there's also a fairly good chance that Jack and his match will have enough of a different profile (race, age, profession, education, criminal history, etc.) that will differentiate them -- or that Jack's Match will have a solid, pristine alibi...

Keep in mind a DNA match should not be an automatic conviction. It can't work like that. Reflect on the "DNA planted at the scene" scenario...

...sage to the trunks: long vigorous, strokes, growing up in a crescendo. Golly! It was as enjoyable to them as mas...

"Is that cloning or theft? Should clones be welcomed or abhorred?"

Easy. Clones should be welcomed.

1) They put innovation pressure on the original, benefiting everybody.
2) They put price pressure on the original, benefiting everybody.
3) They may create a better platform, a better product than the original, benefiting everybody.

Everybody wins. Except when you look at the motivation to create original products in the first place. Will the clones lower the reward and make it less beneficial to be original?

Hardly.

1) A truly original and inovative product will take some time to clone -- there will be a lead, in which user base/fan base/multiplayer communities should create critical mass.
2) Playing it right, the original *will* have goodwill. In other words, all things being fairly equal, people will likely stay with the original.
3) Originality is a scale, not a binary concept. Games are more or less original. Per (2) above, clones will need to compete in originality just like their inspiration did. When each clone out of many tries to be a little more original than the next, they may arrive at a quite original game, per Darwin. This could happen even though they started off at a lower plateau of originality than the concept originator. Think StarCraft.
4) In this sense, everyone is (or must be) original to be relevant. Originality is not at risk.

I hope that didn't sound too confusing :-)