alexqgb

97 ms·

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by alexqgb 14y ago
You're missing the point, which is that the the maximum carrying capacity of a road is a function of the skill exercised by the drivers. The issue revealed here is that even a small number of unskilled drivers can do terrible things to the
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Braudel is a fantastic historian in his own right, but especially important in this context in that he started his career as an overt Marxist who wanted to contribute to Marx's theory by supplying the actual history on which it depended. Th
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by alexqgb 14y ago
That also suggests that if Svbtle were to find its way into something good, Curtis may not be seen as essential to ongoing success, whatever that may be. It's founder as catalyst, rather than architect, making it more like Twitter, less lik
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by alexqgb 14y ago
You may not realize you've just made an argument from anecdote, but you have, and that represents a well-known logical fallacy. Moreover, this fallacy is famously favored by those who don't mind being deceptive when they find that facts, br
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by alexqgb 14y ago
The record recently set by Hollywood did not pertain to the industry as a whole (which is what you assert). It pertained only to box office revenue, which is simply one source of income among many relied on by producers to recoup the costs
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by alexqgb 14y ago
For the longest time, it was also a very technical issue, of issue only to wonks. The general public simply didn't understand it well enough to recognize how pernicious an effect it really had, the news media (which is resolutely pro-status
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by alexqgb 14y ago
I'm sorry, but this really isn't an either / or proposition. The real bone of contention isn't one technical change or another. It's the vote itself. Its power has been steadily eroded, leaving the electorate with less and less control over
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by alexqgb 14y ago
There's no absolutely fair way to do it. As you note, the best way to do it is simply the best we can do. California's system isn't simple, but it is viable, and now that it exists, it can serve as a template for others. It's not perfect, b
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by alexqgb 14y ago
That's an understatement. Here in California, politicians reacted to the idea with an incandescent, frothing-at-the-mouth rage peppered with (political) death-threates aimed at anyone who dared to make an issue of the issue. But thanks to t
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by alexqgb 14y ago
This is wrong on so many levels. First and foremost, the idea that "elected representatives" get to pick who votes for them represents the anthesis of democratically elected representation. It's like a parachute that opens on impact. Your s
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by alexqgb 14y ago
That's exactly correct. A successful gerrymander is a product of packing AND cracking. A mathematically perfect gerrymander, which optimizes both, will allow a party to hold a state with a mere 26% of the vote. I don't know know how close a
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Humanity got by without a lot of things for a very long time. But around 1800, the population begun to climb. After taking 200,000 years to reach our first billion we, reached our seventh just 200 years later. A sudden reversion to the cond
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Right, that's about as many reversals as I can handle in one thread. Good luck with the job hunt.
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Did it ever occur to you that cartographic paradigms are like languages? In the same way you can learn French without giving up Italian, did you know you can learn to see the world through a new lens without abandoning one that's very diffe
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by alexqgb 14y ago
You, sir, have raised pedantry to a level I've never seen before on HN. But I'm not afraid to be servicy, so let me retroactively preface my remarks with the qualification that they apply only to members of the living, and not members of th
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by alexqgb 14y ago
If you're a landlord, you pay taxes on income and property. There's no reason to think that being subjected to taxation in one form exempts you from all others.
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by alexqgb 14y ago
"There are entire continents where your "Mirror World" cannot accurately represent anything, and I feel that puts your seminal moment much further away than you imagine." Really? Entire continents? Nothing whatsoever? Not even a coastline?
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Mapping has traditionally focused not on the past, but on the future. Specifically, in considering courses of action. The Olympian perspective maps provide allow people to account for far more information than they can derive from their imm
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by alexqgb 14y ago
What you're describing is a world with major leagues only. The farm leagues are what drops away, and over time, the whole thing weakens. People at the top right now got their starts in the 1990's Indy boom. What you're seeing now is like th
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Anti-copying legislation won't work - I grant you that - but this is hardly the extent of all legislative possibility. What the media industries need is a box office. A point where people pay up front, then get the show delivered. And if ev
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Most people don't value anything unless they pay for it, and they don't pay for it unless they absolutely have to. That's an Iron Law of Humans.
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Sure dude, and where are you going to get the development budget for a show like Firefly? Kickstarter?
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by alexqgb 14y ago
I really don't know how to spell this out in words of one syllable, but I'll try to keep this clear: no business survives in a legal vacuum. And every business model represents a symbiosis between itself and the law. The law provides protec
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by alexqgb 14y ago
I'm afraid you missed the point entirely. On Earth, there's only one business plan to find, and the humans found it ages ago. You are correct in stating that it is, at heart, a base proposition. No debate there. But as with sex, the facts r
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Dude, you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about. I actually work in production. I know all about the role that copyright plays in keeping media companies honest (more or less) in their dealings with each other because I deal wit
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by alexqgb 14y ago
The point is not sheer volume. It's that the market for which this volume was produced has tastes and interests vastly more diverse than the narrow spectrum of interest to the aristocracy. Also, within this arrangement, the artist himself h
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Here's the problem with telling creators and publishers that they - and they alone - need to be the ones to "find another business model". There is only one business model to find, which is this: Offer something people want. If they decide
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by alexqgb 14y ago
Groceries are vital. That doesn't mean I get them for free. I need access to the roads as well, which is why I pay taxes. Producing this stuff costs money, and those costs are expected to be carried by the people benefiting. Cultural works
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by alexqgb 14y ago
"The only cost to the creator is the erosion of the paying market." Development and production was financed based on the existence of that market. When it erodes, the entire proposition collapses. To creators, the existence of a paying mark
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by alexqgb 14y ago
"It's easy to forget, but patronage was the primary form of funding for the arts for the vast majority of human history." You must mean "civilization's history" (~6,000 years), not "human history" (~200,000 years). Throughout the history of

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