September 3, 2005 – 6:56 pm
Lee Nau just IM’ed me with news on Kepler’s Books: Clark Kepler may have some financial help to keep the store open.
People have rallied behind the store. There’s already a weblog dedicated dedicated to the cause.
September 1, 2005 – 12:39 am
[ via Cynthia, who told me that Rika posted about it. ] After over 50 years of selling books on the Peninsula, Clark Kepler has decided to close his store.
That leaves Books Inc., who took over the space used by Printers, Inc. store in downtown Mountain View, as the only independent new bookseller in the [...]
An analysis of the recent DNS poisoning attacks [ via meuon ] finds that the attackers’ motivation was gaming a pay-per-click search engine.
A couple of days ago, a coworker asked me if I’ve been able to apply any of my economics training in my current profession.
Well, for one thing, I could had told you that [...]
March 17, 2005 – 12:00 am
How does one group of conservative Christians plan to deal with the uncertainties of the modern world?
The authors envision a state designed to protect the “integrity” of the home — autonomous family units composed exclusively of one woman, one man, and as many children as possible. As incentive for the mother to stay home and [...]
Unqualified Offerings reports Japan’s Defense Ministry will issue their annual white paper as a manga to increase readership.
It’s not the first time the Ministry has gone the pop culture route.
Manga on ’serious’ subjects are not new. In 1988, the veteran artist Ishinomori Shotaro wrote Japan, Inc. about the trade wars of the period. Back then, [...]
At last, a week late, my notes.
Bruce Sterling does not worry about a Vingean Singularity that renders humankind a powerless annoyance to transcendent artificial intelligences. Instead he worries about plain old human-driven technological change and nasty WMDs.
Cynthia and I drove up to the City to hear Bruce Sterling’s lecture for the Long Now Foundation at [...]
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Posted under books, science-fiction, technology
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MoveOn, via the Hindustan Times, reports that the GOP used some Indian call centers for some work in 2002.
I bet the folks working at those call centers must had had a laugh, especially if they were push-polling.
I’m surprised that Blame India Watch didn’t pick up on this one. And I would had passed on the [...]
Cheryl Morgan found Blame India Watch, a blog tracking anti-India/outsourcing stories.
The site’s slogan is: “Lost your IT job? Blame HR and your management. Don’t blame India, or Indians.” I’d add, blame the Internet, wage-differentials, and technology.
January 28, 2004 – 12:00 am
[ via Boing Boing ] v-2 had a great retort to those who beat up on Ikea and Starbucks: in a global economy someone was going to find a way to mass market the Scandinavian furniture and coffee drinks that you thought you had a hipster monopoly on.
I’ve heard the same complaints about Amazon and [...]
January 17, 2004 – 12:00 am
Three Laws of Robotics + AI = The Culture.
January 1, 2004 – 12:00 am
I want to gently respond to Robert Scoble’s post about offshoring and Open Source:
I find it ironic that Slashdot is worrying about offshoring of programming. These are the same folks who cheer everytime a country like Israel or China chooses to go with free software over software written in America that costs money. Nice to [...]
August 16, 2003 – 12:00 am
Warren Buffet, advisor to California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger, denounced Proposition 13, the infamous property tax measure. This provoked a knee jerk response by California’s Republicans and Democrats. This came at the same time I was reading Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom.
Zakaria doesn’t care for government by initiative either, and holds out California as [...]
Related to the discussion of Moneyball, the Baseball Prospectus considers the role of the Winner’s Curse on bidding on talent.
The curse is a side effect when bidding on something whose true value will not be known until after the auction; such as baseball players and oil leases; but the bidders have some information that allows [...]
Consider this: The Oakland A’s, with a payroll of around 40 million, win as many or more games than the New York Yankees, whose payroll is over three times as large. Why did this happen? Billy Beane, the A’s general manager, has discovered three things: Bill James, arbitrage, and that the intuition of a Major [...]
February 11, 2003 – 12:00 am
The notion of path dependence — that history matters, annoys economic libertarians the same way that evolution annoys deists: it implies pure dumb luck is a factor in the order of things. It’s a knock against the Learned Hand Doctrine, market dominance may not derive from superior technology or execution alone. So while Blogistan revels [...]
