vitolds

I would also add to this list audible.com which restricts certain books to US only. I am a platinum subscriber to audible, however, I couldn't get my hands on Stephen King's Under The Dome. So I got it from the thepiratebay pretty much on the next day. I did buy other King's books on audible though.

listening podcasts and audiobooks on normal speed => listening at 2x speed

The nice thing about markets is that people can put their money where their mouth is. I wonder if DHH, assuming he had an opportunity, would short facebook at $50 billion valuation. Investment banks have talented people working for them, and they have excellent knowledge on how different assets are priced, they may be wrong but it's very hard to tell exactly when they are wrong. I guess betting against them would be rational if DHH had some unique insight as to why $50B is too much. However a claim about the bubble 2.0 or frothy markets is not something unique -- I'm sure they have already priced this public sentiment into the deal.

they would just multiply the number of downloads by the average ticket price and ask for the compensation for the lost revenues caused by piracy.

1. at least in the urban areas, there are always just as many schools to choose form as grocery stores (so check)

2. easy, just select schools with good graduation, low crime etc. - just as people are selecting good schools now by relocating to a different(better) neighborhood. (check)

3. people switch schools all the time just as they switch jobs, granted you may have difficulties to do it in mid semester but this is not a serious obstacle. (check)

So, all the conditions are met, can we open the market to competition now?

and at providing the service.

Because the profit component makes any system more efficient.

If they did a better job, they would.

Since goals change every 4 years and that is a major problem, let's just privatize the whole thing.

Maybe instead of comparing military and education in terms of why unions are allowed in one and not in the other, he should just make a comparison between education and any private sector with functioning competition. I'd say the benchmark for education should not be the military but rather retail. Imagine schools as efficient as Walmart or Starbucks.

> "Due to Armadillo Aerospace, in the last decade I have observed and interacted with a lot of different agencies, civil servants, and congressmen, and I have collected enough data points to form some opinions."

I think this is very important part of his argument. A person who has just graduated from high school has very little first hand knowledge about how things work and can only parrot stuff learned mostly from media sometimes from books. You can dismiss Carmack's arguments only if you think that Carmack:

a) has a political agenda and is lying about his experience with government

b) has a low IQ and is incapable of seeing how things "really work"

c) has significantly less experience than you and your experience with government has been very much different.

If you just graduated high school a year ago and everything you needed to know about politics you learned from the Daily Show, at least give Carmack the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's on to something.

To see what the most advanced futurists, namely Jules Verne, were thinking about the far out future, take a few minutes and read this interesting piece published in 1889. The story is titled In the Year 2889, here's the link http://wondersmith.com/scifi/2889.htm

I had the same problem and then I switched on Safari's Reader feature -- problem solved.

results were negative.

According to The Invisible Gorilla (very interesting book btw) there have been other experiments done with gamers that supposedly found improved cognitive abilities resulting from intense FPS gameplay. However, the authors of the book did more digging and concluded that some of those experiments on gamers were never independently confirmed by other experimenters. Here's an article on the subject: http://theinvisiblegorilla.com/blog/2010/04/20/the-limits-of...

I got used to controller after about 40 hours of gameplay. However, the first 10 hours were quite damaging to my self esteem. You have to be mentally strong, just keep grinding, it can be done.

good points. if greeks started paying all the taxes, the private sector would cease to exist.

It hurts the government, but the institutions that were dumb enough to lend Greece should be also accountable. Of course if Greece defaults, German taxpayers are likely to pick up the tab so it sucks for them.

During the last 12 months, I have personally spent over $200 on Provigil, however I'm not sure it works. I feel smarter when I'm on it but it might be just a placebo effect.

Good point. From the literature I've encountered it also folows that nonfat icecream is not the solution, it's the problem.

if I go by google numbers then daily uniques are closer to 50k which is still decent for a blog.

I checked out his getrichslowly.org stats on alexa -- seems his site is getting 150-200k uniques per day. Is that considered high enough for a blog to generate decent income?

Thanx, I might actually try that for registered users.

So does Ray Kurzweil from Queens.

What's left? there's always an option to go to thepiratebay.

super relevant for me. I have been playing this game with my 6 yo daughter and was frustrated many times that we could not find a set even though the odds said that we should. Finally the mystery is solved.