npotter

wars create additional financial wealth, but they don't create material wealth. Wars are inflationary. The best definition of wealth has nothing to do with money, but instead asks what the productive potential is. Wars decrease productive potential. They may increase it for one society and decrease it for another, but the sum total is reduced. There are interesting questions here about the destruction of low productivity facilities, say a factory of weavers, versus destruction of high productivity facilities such as a factory of weaving machines.

Also, some wealth is lost in the form of bullets, bombs, and other weapons that are used in the process. It's not the total cost of the bomb, but it is the cost of the physical material that makes the bomb.

I agree with everyone about not waiting to start, but there are ways in which you may have to adjust your business model to account for a global lack of credit, especially when US consumers are so dependent on credit for spending. I think the value of internet ads is going to drop substantially over the next few years as a result of much more sluggish consumer spending.

To me it just means the same thing that you hear all over: make a good product that has tangible value, and people will pay you to use it.

The thing is that inflation is outpacing these numbers. With official inflation numbers hovering around 3% and real inflation (except in housing) being much stronger than that, Actual earnings haven't increased for the majority of the workforce in roughly 15 years.

I'd hardly call a 4.5% increase a surge either. Removing the cut for inflation puts this more at 1.5% at best, hardly an increase worth mentioning.

I think Ars Technica is just trying to drum up interest.

where's that signal to noise essay from pg? I've always viewed standardized tests as a way to approximate intelligence, but they aren't very good ones at that. A search will show a lot of discussions about why.

It's pretty silly to use scores that are partially determined by a given input to prove that some people have that input.

It's circular causality at best and blatant deception at worst.

whatever the default on gedit is. Sans 12pt maybe? 14" laptop screen. I haven't really had problems with this, but I've also never considered it.

There is probably a balance between font size and ease of scrolling around that would be optimal.

I fluctuate between indie-ish stuff and techno type things. I'm not up on my music categories, but bands like Say Hi To Your Mom and spoon.

Also piano music. http://jamendo.com has some great free music, particularly Rob Costlow.

-a real estate aggregator to provide people with historical price trends on given property. Eliminate the information asymmetry between the real estate agent and the buyer.

-public and uploadable data warehouse, a la Many Eyes and Swivel, but with better graphic capability, something along the lines of trendalyzer. Design it in a way that rewards contributors with points to build resident 'data experts' and to enable referencing and storing of different people's analysis.

-web-based statistical software like SAS. allow sharing of programs through repository as well as collaborative editing.