The benefit of not using uranium is that you save yourself the trouble of changing to something else when uranium runs out? Doesn't not using uranium just move that cost closer (and thus makes it more expensive, as the real interest rate is positive*)?

* Basically, if we postpone the transition process, we can spend some time preparing ourselves better, thus making it require less work i.e. be cheaper

Or am I completely misunderstanding you?

While you are correct that computers are deterministic, there are ways to generate pseudo-random numbers based on cryptography, where the "figure out the algorithm" step essentially is the same as breaking the cryptography.

(Actually what you figure out is not the algorithm---which can be publicly known---but a secret input, i.e. a secret key and/or seed.)

So while you are correct in principle, it is possible to make numbers which look so random that their pattern is in practice undetectable.

You're against campaign finance reform, I take it? ;-)

I can name several econ nobel laureates who, in my not overly well-informed opinion, have made a genuine net positive contribution to the world.

Every heard of game theory and Nash equilibria? That'd be John Forbes Nash. How about Vickrey auctions---they might add a little more honesty to the world, and help people allocate goods more efficiently. How about Kenneth Arrow, proving that social decision making processing will always have flaws (so we can stop looking for the perfect ones and start discussing trade-offs)? Or how about Daniel Kahnemann, for reminding economists the danger of their foolish assumptions about human rationality? ;-)

But of course, I'm eager to learn so if econ is corrupt please enlighten me as to how.

Ah, I see Canada is yet another one of these western world countries that does have a left wing ;-)

Funny thing: they didn't agree about spelling in the days of youre.

If they vote uniformly randomly, then they vote for every option in equal amounts. For the whole body of indifferent people, it amounts to expressing no preference for any one particular option. So if all indifferent people truly vote randomly, their behavior perfectly expresses their viewpoint.

(See topic.)

(See title). Or maybe the Galapagos Islands?

For those who don't know (really?), Eben Moglen has a leading role in drafting the GPL licenses and in enforcing them (or had), see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html

He's also the head and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center which has the FSF as one of its clients. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen

SFLC had a podcast, the Software Freedom Law Show, hosted by (among other) Bradley M. Kuhn, the former Executive Director of the FSF and currently on the board of directors.

In other words, Moglen is deeply involved with free software community organizations.

Socat has 80 different options for how to connect (stdio, TCP, raw IP packets, unix sockets, fifo files, UDP, openssl-wrappings, ...).

I'd want to do that with some cryptographic authentication---that is, integrity. Whether I want to my disk keep secret or not is a different matter, but I sure as heck don't want my ISP (or just cosmic rays) corrupting my file system. Maybe ssh or stunnel is the right option here.

Telnet sends terminal management information included in the byte stream. Use netcat or socat if you just want to pipe stdin into a TCP session.

Yep. His interest is (presumably) keeping his job. That means maximizing the profits of his company. His company makes big-name titles (I for one love the Zelda series, and tetris on the game boy wasn't half bad :D), so of course he wants everyone to believe that big-name titles are the best and worthy of the consumers' money. His interests are, of course, not necessarily aligned with those of the public. Probably not, in this case---otherwise he, an MBA schooled in some economics, would just put his faith in the invisible hand of the market.

What you're saying implies, if you think about it, that every sector is behaving like a cartel: the producers are cooperating (rather than competing) in their efforts to make as much money as possible.

If I was running my own company, I'd be a cold-hearted asshole and drop the price below what the cartel is charging and advertise this in as many places as possible, hoping to grab all the customers to myself and making a killing. Now, if these slimy weasel-suckers are half disgusting as me, they'd do the same. You're saying they don't?

If the markets work the way economists think they do, the public exercises an influence on the price by buying some amounts at some price points and different amounts at different price points, thus influence what the optimal price (for the seller) is.

You may also want to add economics to your podcasting list, at econtalk.org, or watching a few video lectures at http://www.youtube.com/user/jodiecongirl#p/c/22785443C5FB0F83 (the latter being more technical and mathematical).

This is not to say "Corporations: good" or "Competition: bad"---on the contrary. I just don't think that all corporations in every sector form cartels: the benefit of undercutting the cartel is a too strong temptation, especially whenever there are more actors in the sector. (And "Yay, go the little guy!")

I believe that it's possible to build distributed systems where you don't trust everyone involved, but only trust that a certain fraction (often at least half or at least two thirds) of the involved parties are honest.

It seems much more likely that at least half of the Jo(e) Randoms doesn't have the time and inclination to fiddle with the routing table on his "internet box" to screw you over than people who want power will abstain from using power to force themselves into your internet box. Especially when Joe Random can find amateur pictures of someone else's partner.

Also, even though I live in the bad part of town, I think my part of town is filled with at least 95% good people, a few who do a little bad because they're put into a sucky position by "The System", and 0.1% who are just fucked up. People generally want to get along. That's in part also why markets work (reasonably well).

But so do other companies---what are the arguments that specifically Microsoft should be stable? If Microsoft got disbanded today, several small $OS Support Contractor companies might form to make use of the available labor and knowledge. What's the benefit of Microsoft compared to the alternative?

Also, taxes tend to be a net loss to society: the make the marginal price of the taxed thing be different from the marginal cost, which causes inefficient allocations as well as underproduction. Providing jobs isn't a benefit in and of itself: hiring people to dig ditches and fill them up again doesn't create value, it's just a transfer with a high labor cost. Just give them the money and skip the ditches, then the world has more free time in total.

We could move off of Windows and onto Linux, BSD, Haiku, OS X, [...]. We have to lose some coordination games on the way---who switches from MS Office to Libre Office first? And we might have to work on improving Wine in order to preserve the investment made in Windows API applications. But if we can solve this, we should be good to go, right? Oh, but good on you for finding an argument specific to the company in question.

I might buy that it's a benefit to the Microsoft employees that they save the friction costs of finding a new job, and the users of Microsoft's products will save similar transaction costs in switching to new products. But that's a one-time gain (or loss avoidance), which shouldn't overrule a long-term increase in productivity. Then there's the general level of churn, of these "recurring one-time" costs, but Microsoft is just one player in a sea of churning companies.

So I'm not really sure, still, what the social benefit is, except keeping the level of churn down. This doesn't seem to outweigh the problems of monopoly... err, bad stuff.