Linked by Howard Fosdick on Mon 19th Nov 2012 09:15 UTC
Levi Asher offers his free memoir of his rise and fall in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The autobiography covers Asher's twenty-five years in programming: his founding of the oldest ongoing literature website Literary Kicks in 1994, his success with the dot-com website iVillage in 1999 (and its subsequent collapse), and how all this insanity affected his personal life. It's a quick, entertaining read.
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RE[4]: Comment by deathshadow
by kwan_e on Fri 23rd Nov 2012 03:00
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2007-02-18
The CPI is supposed to measure the price for maintaining a fixed quality of life, but the fed's been under pressure to manipulate the index for external purposes, which Alan Greenspan notoriously did during his reign over the fed.
Economics in general is about manipulating indexes rather than providing anything meaningful. You can see it in some of the commenters on this website, quoting market caps and P/E ratios, thinking they're intelligent, but not realizing that what they're doing is just choosing the numbers than haven't failed miserably yet and then come up with all kinds of bogus reasons just to keep their own anxieties in check.
RE[5]: Comment by deathshadow
by Alfman on Fri 23rd Nov 2012 03:40
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2011-01-28
kwan_e,
"Economics in general is about manipulating indexes rather than providing anything meaningful."
It seems to me that the concept behind indexes is sound, but they've been corrupted. If the government cannot afford to pay for services when they're pegged to true inflation, then it should come out and say so rather than manipulate the data to come up with favourable numbers. Evidently there's not much incentive to be honest or up front about it.
RE[4]: Comment by deathshadow
by zima on Sat 24th Nov 2012 10:07
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2005-07-06
Your link was from 1996, which is kind of ancient, I'm not sure how relevant it is today. Food prices have spiralled up, housing prices (even after the crash) are unaffordable, cars, gasoline, etc.
[...]
"Either way, possibly an important factor is what kind of houses people want and/or expect - and they're a bit different than in the past"
That's true, but even so I think today's middle class is financially worse off than yesterday's middle class.
[...]
"Either way, possibly an important factor is what kind of houses people want and/or expect - and they're a bit different than in the past"
That's true, but even so I think today's middle class is financially worse off than yesterday's middle class.
The link is from 1996, but its general premise still very much holds - people often have the tendency to look at the past through rose-tinted glasses, that's one of major biases of our memory. Meanwhile, we often get much better bang-for-buck.
BTW, you have rather low car and petrol prices, anyway... And personal anecdote WRT food prices: at least 1.5 year ago they also seemed distinctly lower than in a fairly typical recent EU member state (so a more impoverished place, with much lower wages) - and that in coastal Florida, so also likely not the cheapest of US places.
So, maybe another factor: you're simply starting to feel the more "real" costs of living on this planet (maybe boiling down to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot... ), free lunch nearly over.
Edited 2012-11-24 10:08 UTC
RE[5]: Comment by deathshadow
by Alfman on Sat 24th Nov 2012 17:37
in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by deathshadow"
Member since:2011-01-28
zima,
"The link is from 1996, but its general premise still very much holds"
It doesn't make sense to throw out past knowledge, of course. However many economists were dumbstruck with what has happened since then. Clearly they were not on the money.
"So, maybe another factor: you're simply starting to feel the more 'real' costs of living on this planet... free lunch nearly over."
Couldn't agree more. The western standard of living isn't necessarily sustainable nor scalable.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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Member since:
2011-01-28
zima,
"Maybe, maybe not?..."
Regarding inflation: Some prices have gone up. Others have gone down. There is a lot of wiggle room depending on how one chooses to define the CPI. The CPI is supposed to measure the price for maintaining a fixed quality of life, but the fed's been under pressure to manipulate the index for external purposes, which Alan Greenspan notoriously did during his reign over the fed. Here's a link for anyone who's actually interested.
http://www.shadowstats.com/article/consumer_price_index
Your link was from 1996, which is kind of ancient, I'm not sure how relevant it is today. Food prices have spiralled up, housing prices (even after the crash) are unaffordable, cars, gasoline, etc.
I read in the newspaper that our local food prices are up 30% over a two year period. I had already stopped buying things I used to enjoy due to price increases.
http://www.wnd.com/2008/03/59409/
"Either way, possibly an important factor is what kind of houses people want and/or expect - and they're a bit different than in the past"
That's true, but even so I think today's middle class is financially worse off than yesterday's middle class.