Disqus - Latest Comments for mathoda

Re: Why Hulu Should Embrace Boxee

mathoda — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:30:50 -0000

amusing how communist rebels become the symbol for capitalist creative destruction...

Re: Correspondence Is Making A Comeback

mathoda — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 06:06:13 -0000

I think one place where commenting and conversation may cause change is actually with government, as I hinted at in my essay The Coming Digital Presidency (http://mathoda.com/archives/189). Of course with politics people are even more likely to rant than elsewhere, so having the proper feedback systems matters more.

Re: Why I like netbooks (Scripting News)

mathoda — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 17:39:38 -0000

If Apple comes out with a netbook they won't call it a netbook. It'll be a closed machine that is elegant in design, both hardware and software, it'll sell at a premium, and it'll have features current netbooks don't have while leaving out things you realize you don't really need.

Re: An idea for Obama (Scripting News)

mathoda — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:12:16 -0000

I found the repeated mentions of Joe the Plumber funny ... between that and "maverick" these debates have provided plenty of opportunities for exciting drinking games.

Re: Getting to know Sarah Palin, one bad interview at a time

mathoda — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:07:04 -0000

I have a blog, which hardly makes me part of the media. I also wouldn't say I'm a liberal. I'm probably more libertarian than anything else, since I believe in both social freedom and economic freedom to live life however you want. If you read my review of Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope or my critique of his slam of Wal-Mart you'd probably have figured that out.

I'd say Ron Paul is a libertarian. Apart from his conviction that abortion is always wrong, he seems to favor both social liberty and economic liberty, with a very limited government role.

Sarah Palin is not a libertarian. She appears to favor laws governing how people can culturally live, and she seems unconcerned that the government can hold someone they deem a terrorist suspect in confinement without any judicial review. On economic issues she's in favor of a Paulson type plan, while being unable to describe why (as her interview with Kouric shows). While I think it's possible for a libertarian to favor the Paulson type plan, I think they'd have to do so with the greatest reluctance and with a far better understanding of why it's needed than she has shown.

She may be a smaller government Republican than George W. Bush, but that's not that high a hurdle, really, and frankly Alaskan citizens have the lowest taxes and highest benefits (eg, subsidy) of any state in the union. She favored the "Bridge to Nowhere" originally, and even when she turned against it she didn't refund to the taxpayers, she kept them for state use. I think a true libertarian would have said neither the Congress nor the state of Alaska should be holding onto such funds.

Re: To Splurge Or Not To Splurge

mathoda — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:14:59 -0000

You may find Warren Buffett's thoughts on the Paulson plan of interest: http://mathoda.com/archives/362

Re: America apparently now has terminator drones

mathoda — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:59:36 -0000

The use of such drones is being expanded in Afghanistan: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122169509501550...

As the article states:
"In Iraq, the Army aircraft fed data on insurgent positions to Apache attack helicopters and ground forces. U.S. commanders said the effort has contributed to the deaths of more than 3,000 suspected insurgents."

Re: Chrome, Android, and The Cloud

mathoda — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:30:22 -0000

The amazing thing is how people thought there needed to be an antitrust case against Microsoft for something as obviously necessary as integrating an html rendering engine into an operating system. Happily Google came along and showed once again a new business model is far more effective than a bunch of lawyers.

Re: Thinking About Obama

mathoda — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:14:06 -0000

My understanding of Marxist ideology is that you wouldn't have the right to make money personally, or choose where to give it away. Instead "the state" would make those decisions for you. Sounds to me like you're a compassionate capitalist: make the money, give it to others based on their need. The real question is when others make money, how happy are you to take that money from them and give it to third parties?

Re: Thinking About Obama

mathoda — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:09:21 -0000

Interesting post. I did a thorough book review of The Audacity of Hope by Obama which can be found here: http://mathoda.com/archives/174. Here's an excerpt of my book review on the topic of trade: Mr. Obama notes that the Central American Free Trade Agreement, a law allowing more open trade and investment with poor countries like Honduras and the Dominican Republic, was “overall … probably a net plus for the US economy,” but that any effect it did have would be minimal since the countries effected by the trade agreement in combination don’t have an economy the size of Connecticut. Yet he voted against it because labor unions hate it. As Mr. Obama wisely notes, unions argue for (a) stronger labor protections in countries that trade with the US, (b) rights for foreign workers to unionize, (c) bans on child labor, (d) improved environmental standards, (e) an end to unfair government subsidies, (f) stronger protection for US intellectual property, and (g) an end to artificially devalued foreign currencies, but Mr. Obama observes none of the measures requested by labor unions change the “underlying realities of globalization.” As he states, “work in a dirty factory or overheated sweatshop is often considered a step up on the economic ladder”, “… when all is said and done, China will still have more surplus labor in its countryside than half the entire population of the United States.”, and “the basic debate surrounding free trade has hardly changed since the early 1980s, with labor and its allies generally losing the fight.” As Mr. Obama states, it is “hard to even imagine, much less enforce, an effective regime of protectionism.” Despite all these observations, he voted against a law that would benefit society. Yet Mr. Obama is correct that those political realities are hardly unimportant. As he states, “Unless … a strong signal [is sent] to American workers that the federal government was on their side, protectionist sentiment would only grow.” The issue he faces is that no credible policy has been put forward to address people’s fears, by himself or others.

Re: Socrates was wrong to state the unexamined life is not worth living

mathoda — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:10:48 -0000

Thanks for your extensive thoughts Anita. There's two issues I'll tackle. The first is what Socrates really chose between. The second is what role examination has in determining worth.

As you mention, what Socrates really chose was death via hemlock over exile. Arguably he saw exile as being deprived of the right to teach the examination of life in the manner he thought wise to the community he wanted to belong to, and saw this as worse than choosing death. By choosing death he could transform himself in the minds of his philosopher student community into the protector of the community's ideals. He would also be proving to his society and all future persons the strength of his conviction. The small irony is he could still have examined his life all he wanted, while in exile. He would have lost the ability to teach his current students in his current society. He would also have lost his halo of respect to the like minded community of philosophers that have followed him in time. To Socrates staying loyal to his community was very important, even at the cost of death. I think that's the real choice Socrates made.

To my mind, worth is in the eye of the beholder. If you don't examine yourself at all, you could assume your self worth and you could have worth to other people in your life. What Socrates said wasn't "If you have the wisdom to correctly examine your life and you fail to examine your life you may make mistakes that you later regret or you may not have as rich a life." What he said (according to Plato) is "The unexamined life is not worth living."

It seems to me some people examine their lives hardly at all, but still have worth to their families, their friends, themselves. Many animals don't appear to examine their own lives, but they are ascribed worth by others. A plant doesn't appear to examine its life, but it is ascribed worth.

Socrates statement has a potent ring, but its vagueness has left it open to a myriad of interpretations. Self examination is how we may define self worth, but a person may define great self worth with even a cursory self examination or an unexamined belief. We may feel they are wrong, but that's our judgment of their worth. The point I'm making is that worth is not defined just by self examination. It can actually be assumed without any examination at all.

To pretend that it requires great self examination is really an unexamined statement put forth by philosophers. I do think unexamined statements may have worth. They could have worth because they are actually right or because they have meaning to those who fail to examine them. The point I'm making is that worth is a value judgment, so the statement "The unexamined life is not worth living" is only true to those who want it to be true. To everyone else, it's false. Philosophers have interpreted Socrates' statement as if it is universally true, and that can't be right. To them it has worth, and to me it doesn't.

Re: Socrates was wrong to state the unexamined life is not worth living

mathoda — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:40:32 -0000

If Socrates said "If you have the wisdom to correctly examine your life and you fail to examine your life you may make mistakes that you later regret" I would agree with your interpretation of his statement. On the other hand if someone doesn't examine their life at all perhaps their life has more worth to them then if they do start examining it. If someone is unwise in how they approach examining it perhaps they'd be better off not starting on such an examination. A flaw in what Socrates said is that every human life is examined to some extent. What I really think he meant was "If I am not allowed to teach the examination of life in the manner I consider wise then my life is not worth living." If that is what he meant, the statement is definitely vague and ill written in terms of communicating an idea. Vague statements are fodder for scholars to ponder, so it certainly hasn't hurt his brand any. But as I suggest that may have more to do with philosopher's receptivity to the statement then its actual truth.

Re: Searching for the path to youth

mathoda — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:42:12 -0000

Of course you could try pickled herring! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25141590/

Re: Please Disqus

mathoda — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:58:20 -0000

I use it at http://mathoda.com and am pleased with Disqus. It's particularly nice once you have an identity on it, since you can get an RSS feed of all responses to comments. It also feeds into Friendfeed, and allows Seesmic powered video comments. The problems with it are that it isn't picked up by search engines yet (since it's javascript code inserted), it doesn't handle trackbacks yet, and you can't be convert over comment threads on older posts yet. Happily they are working on all these problems...

Re: When will blogs start presenting data using interactive visuals alongside their stories?

mathoda — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:42:51 -0000

I think this is the visualization you're referring to... very neat! http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/flash/pol...

Re: When will blogs start presenting data using interactive visuals alongside their stories?

mathoda — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:53:11 -0000

Lynn, your suspicion is right, Google is working on better visualization of data for presentation on websites. They have two initiatives I'm aware of. The first is called Google charts. With some tinkering you can use Google to generate a chart image based on some data (see http://code.google.com/apis/chart/). The second is that they bought the gapminder presentation software that Hans Rosling used in his fantastic TED presentation (see http://www.gapminder.org/blog/gapminder-foundat...).

Re: Apple TV vs Roku Netflix

mathoda — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:45:39 -0000

Netflix has a cheaper distribution system but has less content in that system then Apple TV. Personally I'm more attracted to Netflix's model and have been thinking about getting the Roku box. I do think both are pursuing great strategies. I described the strategy in my review of Apple TV entitled "Skating to where the DVD player will go": http://mathoda.com/archives/168

Re: Freeman Dyson’s opinions on climate change

mathoda — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:43:03 -0000

Here's some potentially bad things that can happen if you direct a tremendous amount of resources at a problem you really don't understand: (a) you can forego the use of those resources for problems you really do understand (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_consensus), (b) you can make the situation worse because of unintended effects of your remedy or because the situation was the opposite of what you thought it was, or (c) you can make the true causes of the situation more difficult to study. Another issue is there are potentially millions of unlikely but disastrous events you are uncertain about; like an asteroid hitting earth or a failure to worship Zeus. How do you divide resources among them? One approach is to expend resources on getting a better understanding but not to take action until your understanding and the cost benefits of your remedy improve. The problem will still be roughly the same in 5 years but your understanding of its real threat hopefully improves significantly.

Re: On learning, producing and wisdom

mathoda — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:39:16 -0000

Wow, that's a long bike ride! An additional idea I've heard on how to be better at keeping your commitments is make a bet. It doesn't have to be monetary, and you can either make it with someone else, or you can tell yourself that if you don't keep the commitment you will instead take some other action (like donating to a charity). The idea is to increase the unpleasantness of not keeping the commitment...

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

mathoda — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:00:01 -0000

To continue Paul's analogy, Myhrvold's company gets together a bunch of mountain climbers and asks them about mountains they think may be worth climbing. They put together a map and brand it as an Intellectual Ventures map. The government says if you want to go up that trail, you must buy that map.

Re: The power of links and the value of global knowledge

mathoda — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:00:31 -0000

If you added a "hide topic" feature on Friendfeed you'd probably get a good idea of what kinds of keywords people don't want to learn about from some people. That would be a potentially interesting way of defining what expertise people look for from certain friends. Although alternatively it could just show information overload on a topic someone is actually an expert about. That's part of the problem with people links; sometimes we unlink in our activity with certain people because of dislike, sometimes because other things are grabbing our attention, sometimes because of overload.

Re: How close is Google to accomplishing its mission?

mathoda — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:57:51 -0000

I agree that someone could come along and create a way of organizing and making useful information than Google... in fact they already have in Facebook, FriendFeed, etc., for what those sites are used for. What does Facebook do but present information about your friends? That's a type of information that's certainly encompassed by Google's expansive mission statement. Even for Google's core function of search there's alot of innovations that Google hasn't implemented, as your blog points out.

Re: Ask For The Order

mathoda — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:32:24 -0000

President Johnson tells a story about how when he was running for Congress he encountered an old lady and had a great conversation with her for about an hour. After being elected he happened to encounter her again and thanked her for her vote. She said, but I never voted for you, I voted for the other guy. President Johnson was flabbergasted, and asked her after the nice conversation they had had why she hadn't supported him. And she said, "You never asked me for my vote."

Re: Why the press likes Obama again (Scripting News)

mathoda — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:41:00 -0000

The ability to keep contributing to an electoral campaign through the Internet is one of the reasons Obama's fundraising is so impressive. Of course if he gets elected, how he will use Internet tools will be far more impactful than anything he's done in his campaign, as I describe in my essay The Coming Digital Presidency (http://mathoda.com/archives/189)

Re: united colours of vruz

mathoda — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:27:41 -0000

Open doesn't always trump closed: http://mathoda.com/archives/195