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Comment: Re:network effect iff vendor lockin (Score 1) 235

by phantomfive (#46497009) Attached to: The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly

it's an interesting question to ponder: at what level of clue do customers begin to care? does the mass market ever reach that level?

How about, "when they start noticing it hurting them?" People didn't care about VB6 lock-in until Microsoft discontinued it. Then they began to distance themselves from Microsoft.

People will start caring about Facebook when they realize all their photos are on there and everyone is switching to a different site.

Comment: Re:political paper? (Score 1) 380

by phantomfive (#46494911) Attached to: NASA-Funded Study Investigates Collapse of Industrial Civilization

Please, please put this model together and publish this study. I am begging you! All it would take is a month or two of time by a few Libertarian nerds who want to strut their math modelling stuff. I would truly love to see some Libertarians create a precise quantitative model of how they think societies and economies work for the rest of us to examine and critique.

Apparently you wouldn't read that study either, since you didn't seem to read this one.

Along this same line - I notice that you apparently believe resource use is an arbitrary and biased component to include in a model.

The arbitrariness is in discarding all other potential factors, some of which are mentioned in the introduction of the paper before they are discarded.

How does Ayn Rand's words render them irrelevant? Do the "producers" conjure resources out of thin air?

Go ahead and critique Ayn Rand. The point of using her as an analogy was to help people see how weak this paper is, that the same method could be used to support her work. Apparently you didn't see it.

Comment: Re:Manners (Score 4, Interesting) 380

by phantomfive (#46494545) Attached to: NASA-Funded Study Investigates Collapse of Industrial Civilization

I wonder how polite the old west and the gold rush area were?

Reportedly very polite. They say in the old west, if you didn't get out of your seat when a woman walked in (so she could sit down), someone else would punch you out of your seat. (the gold rush was supposedly good in 48, but the 49ers ruined it all).

Of course, the code of politeness was different than your code, but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. In my experience cultures where fights are more likely to occur (because everyone is carrying a gun or whatever) tend to be more polite, because being rude can get you hurt or killed (think of The Three Musketeers).
