On May 25, 11:17 pm, Robert Redelmeier <red...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Robert Myers <rbmyers...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in part:
>
> > On May 23, 7:11 am, Robert Redelmeier <red...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > Oh, who knows. The architects I've talked to publicly
> > and privately seem to have a pretty good grasp of forest
> > and trees. They're not bean-counters, though.
>
> You don't need to count beans, just noses: AMD has about
> 18,000 employees worldwide. There are 3.2 million people
> employed at Computer & Mathematical work in the US alone.
> Perspective matters.
>
I should have told you to take up your argument with the architect I
quoted. He works there. You don't. The quote is easy enough to
find. Go argue with him.
> > I can regret the direction that an industry is driven by
> > competitive pressures: the big three auto-makers to large
> > vehicles and the processor business to x86 monoculture.
>
> Then regret human nature. There are lots of layers,
> stopping at any particular one is prejudice.
>
You'd have a lot of work to do to convince me that there is such a
thing as human nature, never mind that it explains anything, never
mind that it is a potential cause of thanksgiving or regret.
> > The human race has not flourished to the extent that it
> > has because it is socially inept as a whole. It may not
> > always be pretty, but humans get things done.
>
> So why complain about the market?
>
The only reason that we are not in a colossal world-wide depression
right now is because we've gotten smarter about fiscal and monetary
policy and the tools have been created to allow that knowledge to be
acted upon. Market mechanisms have nothing to do with it. Left to
themselves, the capital markets would have driven themselves into the
ground any number of times in the last decade. Free markets are a
phantasm, and it's a good thing, otherwise another tulip bulb bubble
would be inevitable. "Free markets" are a fiction and sometimes even
a useful fiction, but that's all they are. Does what I or anyone else
think or say about "free" markets matter? You bet your ass it does.
Do I individually have much influence? Not as a result of posting to
this forum, I'm sure, but not having much influence is not the same as
having no influence. I think the x86 monoculture we have is a
lamentable state of affairs.
Feel free to state your own opinion, just leave it unhooked from
cosmic considerations, please: free markets, human nature, communism
vs. capitalism. The discussions get out of hand, you know.
> > The drug industry is not now and never has been adequately
> > regulated, and people die because of that fact.
>
> Are you certain? People also die from over-regulation.
> Perhaps less obvious than adverse reactions, but real:
> I am allergic to penicillin and would die from an injection.
> Had I been in one of the early trials, penicillin could
> have been banned. Millions would have died.
>
Penicillin would not have been banned. It might have been used much
more sparingly, and we might not be standing on the edge of the
crumbling antibiotic cliff we are standing on. Am I certain that
patients have died in the modern era because of inadequate oversight
of drug companies? Yes, I am.
> > I'd like to say that your belief in free markets is touchingly
> > childlike, but it seems more like obstinately fundamentalist
> > to me. I don't care for fundamentalism of any flavor.
>
> Even if you are polar, please do not assume that I am.
> Where did I ever say markets are perfect? Merely because I
> point out the flaws in regulation does not imply that I believe
> markets are perfect. Even fanatics of property rights believe
> in regulation -- legal enforcement of their property.
>
Well, we're even then. Regulation of "free" markets is a messy,
imprecise business. Because I acknowledge that regulation of markets
is often necessary does not make me an east coast elitist, never mind
a socialist, never mind a communist.
> > and the game right now is who gets stuck with the bad paper.
>
> It always is and has been. How bad the paper is varies.
>
We are living in an era of arrogance about risk. People talk about
"five sigma events," as if they had eliminated any kind of reasonable
risk. The ugly reality is that no one *really* knows how to calculate
probabilities that small. You can within the constraints of an
artificial model, but reality has stepped time after time with its own
scenario that the model didn't capture, and you don't have to make
very big mistakes to get five sigma probabilities wrong.
> > [ISO 9000] Doesn't agree with what I've seen.
>
> What have you _seen_? Not heard, mind.
>
How burdensome it can be for a small company.
> > [GWB} I needed an outrageous counter-example.
>
> Why would you think GWB an outrageous counter-example? Politics is
> contentious. If you think him uncontroversial, you should suspect
> your dataset is at least incomplete and possibly havily biased.
>
I really don't want to get into an argument about George Bush. Saying
that financial institutions are competent to *****s risk sounds (on
the face of it) about as plausible as saying that George Bush knows
how to run a war. It was a reasonable analogy when I first made it,
it's still a reasonable analogy, and I refuse to be dragged into a
political argument.
> > The end conclusion is that capitalism is a vast con game.
> > It may well be.
>
> No. Merely because one part has certain attributes
> does not mean the whole has those attributes.
>
Capitalism works as long as markets and economies are growing, but so
do Ponzi schemes. I'm not sure I can see the difference.
> > I get tired of people talking about the Halting Problem,
> > Goedel, Turing, P, and NP, and heaven only knows what else.
> > There are concrete steps that can be taken to improve the
> > reliability of software dramatically.
>
> Yes. They why did you ignore my earlier reference to OpenBSD?
> They have implemented one solution -- line-by-line review.
>
I can't begin to imagine how a line-by-line review of software would
accomplish anything. You'll find mistakes, I'm sure. You won't find
all the mistakes and the code base is a moving target.
> > Only the British think that omnipresence is necessary to fight
> > crime, and they're finding that their implementation of the
> > panopticon is a huge waste of money. You don't have to watch
> > everything. You only have to watch enough to keep the honest
> > people honest and hope that you can catch enough of the really
> > dishonest people to make a difference. That's a general law
> > enforcement strategy, not just one for the Internet.
>
> But you also need a lot of cooperation. You can jail
> 1% of the population. But not 10%.
>
That's true, although the RIAA seems to be proving that even massive
civil disobedience can be dealt with. You can't put 10% of the jail
in population, but there's nothing to stop you from fining 10% of the
population or even cutting them off from the Internet.
Robert.
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